cheapjack2017-12-20T13:09:13+00:00http://cheapjack.github.ioGood Enough Data2017-10-27T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2017/10/27/good-enough-data
<h1 id="can-i-get-a-witness-observing-the-real-world-machines-people-and-knowledge-as-a-practice">Can I get A Witness? Observing The Real World, Machines, People and Knowledge as a Practice</h1>
<p><img width="600" src="http://78.media.tumblr.com/3107208a44ad8323ce8cd4998487b97b/tumblr_mt805lzN7Q1st479ho1_1280.png" /></p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>"What we call the real world is the totality of existence and is at best.. a necessary element of our thinking processes – it is not the name of something we can directly encounter..."
"Aligning objectivity with reliability, and subjectivity with error, is to simultaneously misunderstand the core qualities of skilful practices while artificially canonising scientific techniques with an unwarranted infallibility that is thoroughly undeserved."
"Accepting my understanding of knowledge as a practice, we can see that the kind of subjective knowledges I have suggested here i.e. building, repairing, baking, painting, harmonising – not to mention tree climbing for squirrels – are genuine knowledge practices."
"They have the reliability that is the sign of knowledge, they produce facts as a side-effect of this reliability, and they are sustained by networks of practitioners... it begins to seem as if the adjective ‘subjective’ has become empty and vacuous: the knowledge of beings is knowledge. Objective knowledge – the knowledge teased from objects – is just a special case of knowledge, not its paradigm case."
</code></pre></div></div>
<p><em>Wikipedia Knows Nothing</em> - Chris Bateman</p>
<h2 id="the-kitchen-sink-theatre-of-measurement">The Kitchen Sink Theatre of Measurement</h2>
<p>Last month I spent some time with Sam Skinner, Kei Kreutler, Helen Pritchard, Jennifer Gabrys, Neil Winterburn and Hwa Young Jung at the <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/whats-on/current/the-theatre-of-measurement.aspx">Theatre of Measurement event</a> at FACT reflecting on <em>“observation culture”</em> in the <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/the-new-observatory.aspx">The New Observatory</a> exhibition at FACT curated by Hannah Redler Hawes (from the Open Data Institute) and artist researcher, <a href="http://samskinner.net/">Sam Skinner</a>. I was presenting our <a href="http://criticalkits.re-dock.org/">Critical kits</a> work in the context of Re-Dock’s practice, alongside presentations from artists and practitioners involved in what I think was a really important exhibition.</p>
<p>The event left everyone with much food for thought and since then, my reflections on it have been heavily influenced by some recent reading of the work of Chris Batemen, MacKenzie Wark and others.</p>
<p>It’s also resonated with my own work around Maker and IoT culture and as Domestic Science. <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a> is a space for myself and artist colleagues Hwa Young Jung and Glenn Boulter’s explorations of ‘domestic’ knowledge with respect to networked culture; the emerging cultures of data and connectivity that are now part of the fabric of domestic life, the <em>‘lifeworld’</em> of the everyday.</p>
<h2 id="domestic-science">Domestic Science</h2>
<p><img width="300" src="http://domesticscience.org.uk/images/EasterClass1.png" /></p>
<p>It’s not uncommon for an average family to be aware of the concept of data; it inspires both indifference, fear and anxious hopes for job prospects, especially in the context of wildly ambitious claims for a tech literate post <code class="highlighter-rouge">code-club</code> society for the future. I see this ‘domestic’ knowledge as the actual lived data literacy that’s part of our supposed post-internet knowledge economy.</p>
<p>Clearly its a play and self conscious update on what constituted domestic science in the UK in the mid 20th century; but it’s no longer how to keep clothes clean or successful baking, but something else.</p>
<p>What sounded like science fiction from the perspective of the mid 1990s is now commonplace: People across all class &amp; economic backgrounds produce and consume multiple digital information streams across social media, steal content from torrent sites and Kodi streams, children host minecraft servers and everyone has their good and bad password systems, facebook mistakes and trolling anecdotes alongside all the other worries of the <em>over-developed</em> world.</p>
<p>I see this domestic perspective as at least part of the context of the show in FACT and part of it’s:</p>
<p><em>“(invitation for) visitors to consider how everyday life is a subject of observation in which we all perform as our own micro-observatories, or ‘observatories of ourselves’. It asks us to reassess our roles as active citizens within a ‘surveillance’ culture,”</em></p>
<p>FACT is an influential art institution, and like similar organisations, it puts forward a strong rhetoric and remit for public service, engagement and access so thinking of it as a way of challenging domestic knowledge is important. I see much ‘creative tech’ exhibition work as the domestic end or <em>UX</em> of research; how it’s actually experienced outside of the specialist knowledge networks of researchers and artists working in this field; much more so than it being an artform in a way.</p>
<h2 id="observation-culture">Observation Culture</h2>
<p>My immediate response to <strong><em>The New Observatory</em></strong> was how pleased I was that the show traced back histories of observation through Liverpool’s maritime science past &amp; present and placed it alongside contemporary observation of amateur radio and astronomy and then onto the civic innovations of an <em>Internet Of Things</em> (IoT) future, with a diverse range of work that explored and speculated around this. It was clear that there was a curiosity for the nuanced history around what might be called <strong><em>observation culture</em></strong>.</p>
<p>I like this term; it’s like a handy shorthand for the most basic human response to the world and whatever claims science makes it comes down to that base. From turn-of-the-century citizen science to the professionalised sciences, amateur weather watchers to supercomputer climate change models, dockmaster tide tables to the modern day logistics of super-containerisation: its all based on tireless observation and logging by people.</p>
<p>I remember 16 years ago working as a technician for an artist residency at Cammell Laird shipyards in Birkenhead (where my paternal grandfather worked) meeting someone in a little hut watching the tide with a radio for the shipyards alongside the tide tables gaffa taped to the wall. It seemed weird to still exist in a high tech shipyard alongside ship AIS, GPS and globally acknowledged tide timings; it was an early realisation for me of the ‘stack’ of expertise and experience not just in computer culture but across all of the infrastructure of society.</p>
<p>It’s a thing that we all get from time to time; what I like to call <strong>Infrastructure vertigo</strong>.</p>
<p>For every contemporary <a href="https://github.com/sealevelresearch/tide-predictor">Tide prediction tool</a> used there’s a lineage back to amateur tide watching and machines like the Doodson Lege Tide Machine made by Dr. Arthur Doodson at Bidston Observatory (what became the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, now part of NOC who I worked with on my <a href="http://currently.no">Currently</a> projects and an early shared interest with Sam.)</p>
<iframe width="941" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AxC770lpSLw?list=PLb7AqLpLLULgqwn7fzorBPSvVxbHQ4xsK" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>Like Sam I’m inspired by the communal experience and knowledge networks of amateur astronomy, planespotting and tide tables; the <em>standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants</em> part of <em>Infrastructure Vertigo</em>. This is the basis for my own practice-based research into partipatory amateur cultures: Plane Spotters, Amateur Radio, citizen scientists, maker and game cultures using sensors and IoT.</p>
<p>Sam kindly got it touch as his early vision for the FACT show developed and together we thought of activity with the public that explored aspects of exhibition content but in the end we didnt take it further.</p>
<p>I liked how Sam’s curatorial approach was not purely celebratory nor speculative or a general review of the state of data culture. It seemed also to be built around contemporary thinking around knowledge as an embodied practice in situ, where context is king. All the work seems to connect to this somehow; I loved the <a href="https://vimeo.com/channels/datacatcher">Datacatchers</a> by Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths University which felt akin to my text based obsession with <a href="http://slides.com/cheapjack/inf">Interactive Non Fiction</a></p>
<p>This and the Dustbox project by <a href="https://citizensense.net/">Citizen Sense</a> seems to build on this embodied civic role, making sensors in intriguing porcelain cases (cast from 3D models of dust motes), almost like domestic ornaments, clearly playing with the design aesthetic of ‘scientific’ instruments.</p>
<h2 id="what-is-measurement-what-is-a-fact">What is Measurement? What is a fact?</h2>
<p>I think of our current situation as a <em>data</em> culture; another extension of <em>observation culture</em> with it’s own vertigo. I use it to broadly talk of the post-internet culture of the ‘over-developed’ world where the internet and it’s infrastructure of services and economies is common place. Its a similar description of the information age or networked world, but its more descriptive in that it acknowledges a more abstracted idea of data; as a commodity and resource that impacts on both our everyday experience and our engineering and hacking of that world.</p>
<p>Chris Bateman’s <em>Wikipedia Knows Nothing</em> which despite it’s inflammatory title which could be read as antagonistic to data culture and valuable criticism of the ethics of anonomous peer review, I’ve found to be a handy plain speaking frame and primer for considering the Theatre of Measurement and wider data culture the New Observatory speculates around. It also touches all manner of epistemological thought, and the nature of how we ‘make’ knowledge.</p>
<p>For me it’s a refreshing review of what we actually mean when we talk about <em>‘objective data’</em> and the actual process of observing something in the <em>real world</em>. It seems like a really useful tool in reflecting on the often evangelical excitement of the potential of data in society.</p>
<p>I’ve found myself at times intoxicated by a fervour for data’s creative potential, in the engineering of a modest technical platform for observing and capturing DIY data and then designing a speculative space to interact with this ‘knowledge’ through the game Minecraft. The <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Craft">RF-Craft</a> project was my form of participation in observation culture through the medium of educational IoT. However I have not really thought about what observation of reality <em>really</em> is and what I am <em>actually</em> doing when I make artwork inspired by engineering and citizen science.</p>
<p>Am I making subjective experiences to further validate objective data and established scientific method with no critical sensibility? Am I only playing with science literacy or am I some kind of methodological re-seller or STEM promoter? Do I actually understand what data is?</p>
<p>It’s not inconsequential that Chris is a game developer in addition to a philosopher, and it’s heartening to see someone in game culture (something as much part of network culture as embedded systems, IoT communities and reddit dialogues) applying critical thought to the actual implications of networked knowledge, rather than complacently accepting the <strong>terms and conditions</strong> of technology as a complex, inevitable, but essentially neutral or benevolent conduit for traditional content, that we know in our inherited “Guthenberg minds” as text or video.</p>
<p>I was struck by his reminder of knowledge as a <strong><em>practice</em></strong> and it’s relationship to so called <em>objective</em> reality; in particular a thought experiment over how we build up a ‘picture’ of the ‘real’ world: we often have of a map of the outside world and how we move within and relate to it and we often think of that like an ‘objective’ sandbox we all play within in a similar way.</p>
<p>But verifiable science itself makes that map not what we think it is; relativity and later the quantum world makes that obvious but still, that objective ‘sandbox’ image of the world we all share is powerful and in some ways our technology can reinforce it.</p>
<p>What is more useful perhaps is to think that there is a plurality of ‘real worlds’; a multiverse of encounters of observations. Of course the specialist practice of verifiable observational science is a big important part of that.</p>
<p>I think the show and the artists involved and some of my work with Re-Dock, in particular the <a href="http://criticalkits.re-dock.org/">Critical Kits</a> project with Domestic Science, through the unpicking and re-presentation of observation and measurement cultures opens up what Chris refers to a plurality of ‘real’ worlds and an interplay of what is often thought of as a strict dichotomy (especially when we think of reliability) of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ forms of knowledge.</p>
<p>I’d like to think a contemporary artistic practice that is concerned with the use of technology, will undermine the clear boundaries of this surprisingly persistant dichotomy to get at what is really going on or at least map it out in ways that are more plural, diverse and open to question and utility.</p>
<p>As an aside, what I think is interesting is that this hard to shake binary, the <em>picture</em> that captures us between subjective and objective is often confused with the essential differences between ‘science’ and ‘art’.</p>
<h2 id="a-multiverse-of-knowledge">A Multiverse of Knowledge</h2>
<p>Knowledge is knowledge; it all can have value; an artist’s magical invocation at the site of Bidston observatory is as ‘valid’ as a temperature gauge reading recorded on paper or EEPROM; how and why meaning is derived from it or acted upon is something else entirely and far more political.</p>
<p>It’s possibly where the New Observatory researchers and my own work take us only to the edge of without really a clear idea of where to go next. It’s fine to participate in these real worlds but how will we really negotiate them all and make more of the world take part?</p>
<p>Lets be honest with ourselves; The temperature reading could indicate suspected pollution in a local canal with implications for a whole community. The magical performance of artists is unlikely to affect so many people and although it is not inter-operable with a set of temperature readings to reveal a hidden important community problem, it remains as a valid knowledge practice or it’s artefact.</p>
<p><a href="http://kei.bio/">Kei</a>’s work with the <a href="https://libre.space/">Libre space project</a> seemed to playfully jump around this space while allowing real participation and not just speculative gestues.</p>
<p><img width="300" src="http://domesticscience.org.uk/data/c_k3.png" /></p>
<h2 id="critical-calibration"><a href="#critical-calibration">Critical Calibration</a></h2>
<p>Aside from triggering a week long sojourn around ancient Cartesian problems, maybe most useful to observation culture is Chris’s work thinking of <strong>facts</strong> or <strong>measurements</strong> as only artefacts or residues of knowledge practices: the notion that science and indeed observational culture altogether is about constructing <em>reliable witnesses</em> not reality itself, just a specialist set of encounters with it normally through highly specialised objects.</p>
<p>Data culture is awash with claims for these reliable witnesses. However the actual <em>reliability</em> is often pushed way into the background as a metaphysical concern we dont really have time for.</p>
<p>Our thirst for data through highly reliable witnesses (machines or machinic efficiency) at scale, seems to make massive expectations for this reliability; but it is worth noting that the sensors themselves and the technical communities who develop and maintain them are not necessarily making these claims.</p>
<p>Often it’s our desire and webs of need that build up this reliability perhaps way beyond the actual ability of observed data by machines or humans to live up to. By reliability I don’t mean only the performance of the calibrated sensor, but the reliability of what it could <em>mean</em>.</p>
<p>Aside from those of an engineering bent people dont really want large live datasets for their own sake. That said often fashion has a role to play and it is often the done thing to release open data with no real clue who is going to use it and for what; no context can lead you somewhere at best useless or at worst misleading.</p>
<p>All data is, after all, enlisted to serve some agenda or meaning good or bad; all datasets must be setup and expected to be acted upon in some way even if just as an archive. Much of the work in the <strong>New Observatory</strong> seems to acknowledge this to a degree and speculates upon the political and civic uses of data.</p>
<p>What came up in our talks with artists in the show was an interest in extending the practice of <strong><em>calibration</em></strong> beyond purely technical performance; but to think of other knowledge practices and contexts, like a form of <em>social</em> or <em>critical</em> calibration. It’s something that was at the heart of <a href="http://criticalkits.re-dock.org/">Critical Kits</a>. When artists make kits, especially tech heavy ones do the instructions include social and critical contexts or is it purely a kind of open-source packaging?</p>
<p>In terms of a very specialised area of expertise a well calibrated air quality sensor is an expert witness to air quality. To then embed these sensors in more domestic community settings opens it up to a more social context that should be part of it’s calibration; or how we setup it’s reliability or it’s opportunity to generate meaning.</p>
<p>These arent necessarily better than a sensor on top of some traffic lights: but it does enable a human witness to take part somehow which allows an additional aspect to what is witnessed and another <em>real world</em> to be considered.</p>
<p>Data should be embedded into some form of social practice in order to make something more meaningful and I think this is the space for <strong><em>critical callibration</em></strong>.</p>
<p>Sam revealed a brilliant quote from John Hartnup <em>On the Importance of Testing Chronometers before they are used at Sea</em> writing in 1857. For me it goes way back to the basics of a sensor or a datasets responsibility:</p>
<p><strong><em>“(the engineer) is called upon almost daily to exercise his judgement as to the degree of confidence which he is justified in placing in his instruments and a knowledge of the imperfections to which they are liable is the only thing that can guide him to to correct conclusions in these, to him, very important matters”</em></strong></p>
<h1 id="retail-therapy-and-inter-operability">Retail Therapy and Inter-operability</h1>
<p><img width="300" src="http://domesticscience.org.uk/data/c_k2.png" /></p>
<p>Despite all this it’s clear that privileged objective knowledge is beyond doubt entirely vital. It goes without saying that climate science despite denial at the highest level remains one of the most important witnesses for our contemporary society, with or without a contextual calibration. It may be the only qualifying witness to a limit and check on the rampant exploitation of every aspect of human life and essential to our survival as a culture.</p>
<p>Inter-operability is a theme our event was supposed to explore but to be fair we never quite made that happen. I actually think that the interoperability of data is a bit of an assumption, if not a ‘utility myth’ and more often than not an impossible ethic to strive for the engineers of sensors and data architecture for anyone involved with data. Every Dewey Decimal, SQL, XML, Linked data and blockchain are like new attempts at inter-operability.</p>
<p>Lets go back to my canal workshop example I mentioned earlier. I designed a workshop intended to further the understanding of data collection and the construction of meaning from data through a participatory means. I saw this as a form of data and observation literacy; not necessarily an artistic endeavour or useful inter-operable data.</p>
<p>Was I doing bad science, poor craft but good art? Or some kind of complex combination?</p>
<p>Simply it was a lofi attempt at some simple questions.</p>
<ul>
<li>Can we understand how we measure environmental facts?</li>
<li>Can we see how we construct meaning from it?</li>
<li>Does it make a difference when you measure data yourself and plot it on a graph through sewing?</li>
</ul>
<p>I explored this further with <a href="http://mcqn.com/">MCQN.net</a> (engineer for the dustbox) and Gemma May Latham for <a href="http://github.com/cheapjack/Co-Tidal">Co-Tidal</a> and although we certainly didnt get to the bottom of how reliable our data was, we did generate many diverse and fascinating conversations with people from basic tide timetables and what the coast meant to them, and looking back publishing these conversations alongside the tide tables that triggered them and the sewn artefacts could be something worth while.</p>
<h2 id="some-outcomes">Some outcomes</h2>
<p>I proposed a workshop to speculate on data interoperability using Twine which we didnt quite get to. Nor did we perform a magical spell with a DIY copper antenna array on the roof of FACT. I’ll leave that to another time..</p>
<p>Here’s a <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/games/ANewObservatory.html">Data Interoperability</a> game, made in twine that explains the idea.</p>
<p>I also made some resources for Domestic Science to help artists participate in data: the measurement and observation culture of now:</p>
<p><a href="https://gitlab.com/DomesticScience/InteractiveNonFiction">Interactive Non Fiction Resources</a></p>
<h3 id="bertand-russell-objective-certainty-and-a-theatre-of-relativity">Bertand Russell: Objective certainty and a Theatre Of Relativity</h3>
<h4 id="click-here-to-listen-to-a-presentation-of-the-abc-of-relativity">Click here to listen to a presentation of <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/games/abcOfRelativity/abcOfRelativity.html">The ABC of Relativity</a></h4>
<p>Finally going back to the intoxication that objective science can generate for artist and scientist alike I discovered an archive of Bertrand Russells popularisation of relativity, read by old school theatre actor, Derek Jakobi.</p>
<p>There’s no embodied sharing here, knowledge practices or participatory learning. However it draws you in and it <em>does engage</em>. And perhaps as much as digital making would and its as much an encounter with science that illustrates the vast potential for change through the interpretation of observations as anything in the 21st century can provide.</p>
<p>I’ve made a presentation of it online above but plan to place it in one of our Domestic Science Twine game arcades which you can <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/InF.html">find out more about here</a></p>
<p>It’s well worth a listen and then try think about what your objective reality map looks like. Chris Batemen reminds us that Russell possibly mis-interpreted his greatest pupil Wittgenstein in a way that may have had huge implications for the mythologies of science as a science of salvation.</p>
<p>Its hard to be critical of this; its undeniable how relativity changed the nature of our reality in the same way as quantum mechanics and supersymmetry have. To not be intoxicated and changed by it’s key thought experiments is impossible.</p>
<p>But how he ends this celebration of thought and re-intepretation of observations rings just slightly off somehow now; in the same way that claims for data’s power seems like it needs tempering and contextualising. They are still only models and maps for the world: vast datasets and space-time are not a reality to be encountered directly;</p>
<p><em>“They are actually metaphysical sketches, ambitious maps of how all reality is supposed to work, guiding visions, sytems of direction for the rest of our ideas.”</em> -<strong>Mary Midgley</strong></p>
<p>Without critical and social calibration they may well be warping the path we take.</p>
Gardening, Dark Matter, Grey Havens and the Background Radiation of Maker/Hack spaces2017-02-13T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2017/02/13/gardening-dark-matter-grey-havens-and-the-background-radiation-of-makerhack-spaces
<p><img src="/images/DasLabor.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>This was going to be one of my last rambles on makerspaces. But having started this post in Feb 2017, I haven’t been able to finish. A mysterious gravity keeps pulling me back to edit.</p>
<p>In July 2017 I moved temporarily from my permanent desk at <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoES Liverpool</a> as they consider their <a href="https://doesliverpool.com/business/does-liverpool-wants-to-move/">move to new premises</a> having spent a good 4 years benefitting from my associations with DoES and from there, a wider maker-space/hackerspace community. From <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/06/18/publicengineering-is-a-response-to-bochum-in-the">Public Engineering</a> with <a href="https://wiki.das-labor.org">DasLabor</a> to numerous <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/EverythingMinecraft">Minecraft</a> flavoured projects like <a href="http://github.com/cheapjack/CloudMaker/">CloudMaker</a>, <a href="http://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Craft">RF-Craft</a>, <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">ShrimpCraft</a>, <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Rail-Craft">Rail-RF-Craft</a> and most recently the epic <a href="http://milecastles.uk">Milecastles</a> project for <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">DomesticScience</a>.</p>
<p>Milecastles is an epic RFID driven Text Adventure game distributed across 15 bespoke game boxes built in DoES, running a bespoke micropython image with a bespoke game authoring system, <a href="http://github.com/cefn/avatap">AVATAP</a> made with Cefn Hoile of <a href="http://shrimping.it">Shrimping.it</a> with Glenn Boulter, my colleague and co-founder of <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">DomesticScience</a>. The AVATAP authoring and interaction system is compressed onto ESP8266 boards with stories
written in JSON in a pyglet authoring environment, following much co-design with DomesticScience and a team of curators at the Hadrian’s wall museums. I talked about it over these <a href="http://slides.com/cheapjack/inf">slides</a> recently at <a href="http://www.wutheringbytes.com/">Wuthering Bytes</a></p>
<p>Bottom line, I could not have made any of this happen without that workshop and desk in Hanover Street. But really it’s not just the desk, or the workshop; It would not have happened without engaging with the people that spin around the DoESLiverpool gravity well. When we say <em>community</em> or <em>maker</em> ‘anything’ we seem to suggest something homogenous; but actually it’s alot of very specific people doing very different things from very different backgrounds. What is homogenous are people with a huge generosity of time to help share knowledge.</p>
<p>I’m poised on developing a major research and public engagement project with a university in collaboration with Domestic Science and this really takes everything I’ve learned from DoES and the maker <em>thing</em> and applies it to microbiology.</p>
<p>So what have I learned? I think it’s a certain <em>flavour</em> of sharing knowledge; It is the <strong>knowledge exchange</strong> talked about in larger research institutions, but it’s an informal kind of exchange that’s tricky to track; when you say “engaging people / learning through participation and making / collaborations across disciplines” these vague often overused statements and expectations are all things that happen but actually they all have a very personal specific note to them. Although Makerspaces love (and should) document their knowledge in a seemingly anonomous <a href="https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/wiki/wiki/">wiki</a>, the exchange we are talking about is often about generous personalities. It’s also something you can’t just walk in and get off the shelf; the wiki does that to a degree; and so do the <a href="https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/wiki/wiki/Maker-night">makernights</a>, but to really <em>get it</em> you have to do some <strong>gardening</strong>. That is, you have to do some digging and planting: give up alot of personal time and be generous, flag up an <a href="https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/issues">issue</a> and then try <a href="https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/issues/479">close</a> it.</p>
<p>I’ve talked up the importance of maker culture alot, inspired by personally benefitting from this generosity. It’s also been an essential part of my art practice: a form of research and participation in the cultures that evolve around things like making, science and engineering. What I broadly call <strong>technical cultures</strong>. I use this phrase very broadly and I don’t just include the recent idea of makers, or things with a computer involved, but also the sciences generally and things like <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/cq-cq-this-is-gb2wcr-calling-cq/">Amateur Radio</a>, <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/ViewingArea">Planespotting</a>, <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/11/21/astroturf">Amateur Astronomy</a>, <a href="http://www.runcornmodelboats.co.uk">Model Boats</a> and the <a href="http://www.finds.org.uk">Portable Antiquities Scheme</a>. Generally as an artist I look at disciplines and interests that are NOT ART as a way to inform what art practice could be. In a way maker culture has been a recent phenomenon that has clear connections and in-roads to art practice and in a weird way for me, it’s like my research area made into a real social phenomenon. So it’s no surprise I’ve been involved in this.</p>
<p>I’ve also been involved with some brilliant <a href="http://futuremakespaces.rca.ac.uk/">formal research about makerspaces</a>. So to pick up some pretentious astrophysics analogies, on top of the gardening ones: now I’m out at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point">Lagrange point</a> of the DoES influence, working from home, I’ve tried to reflect on it all.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how representative DoES is really of maker culture and whether Im actually talking about <em>DoES culture</em>. When you get involved with any DoES community events, it certainly feels like a good fit to the definition of <em>‘Maker Culture’</em> at the various maker events they get involved in. Everyone at these events seems to be doing the generosity-of-knowledge-and-time thing. Getting involved with research into makerspaces’ impact on manufacturing made me realise that despite that, all of the makerspaces involved where actually very, very different things and had really diverse ambitions, interests, motivations and business models. You could not easily assess how that diversity could drive a transformation of manufacturing at scale for example.</p>
<p>I was considering drawing a line under this period of interest in maker culture because for someone who got interested in 2009 the maker ‘thing’ has been around for ages and many organisations and institutions are only now finally catching up. This might come across as staking some kind of arrogant critical claim (ok it <strong>is</strong> a little) but it’s more of an observation. That catching up process <em>has</em> been beneficial to individual makers and the wider community, in terms of work opportunities and community development. Many organisations and groups and individuals picked up on the value of it from the very beginning: a shift in how the so called creative industries could work; as an informal diverse community with no top-down designed strategic programme or innovation powerhouse, highly independent, productive and valuable. The ‘maker’ movement that’s still quite possibly <a href="https://twitter.com/amcewen/status/811342328166227968">not a movement</a>.</p>
<p>In the best cases supportive people and organisations recognised the makerspace/hackspace thing as an <em>emerged</em> (not emerging) trend with real value and want everyone to share in that. At worst some still haven’t really noticed it, unintentionally sidelined it, copied it or have (unknowingly or otherwise) co-opted it into their existing raison d’etre to validate their place as innovative cultural bodies.</p>
<p>Engagement, research and innovation through doing in a community is clearly something that should be going on anyway everywhere but often isn’t, so pulling in makers or doing making type stuff can stimulate it, with little large scale investment but potentially a huge degree of benefit. To be generous, the organisations pulling in maker activity although slow to respond or not quite ‘getting it’, are overall doing a good thing and it’s helping more people get involved and through mainstreaming it, will <em>hopefully</em> make for a more diverse and vibrant community.</p>
<h4 id="look-at-them-look-what-theyve-done-its-really-great---markus-brinkmann-organiser-das-labor">“Look at them. Look what they’ve done. It’s really great” - Markus Brinkmann, organiser, Das Labor</h4>
<p>I keep thinking back to some conversations I had with Markus Brinkmann at Das Labor when we developed a great little exchange and partnership project with DoES and <a href="https://wiki.das-labor.org/w/PublicEngineering">Das Labor</a>, <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/06/18/publicengineering-is-a-response-to-bochum-in-the">Public Engineering</a> a much more ‘traditional’ hackerspace born out of a Chaos Communication Camp in the 2000s. Unbeknownst to me the marketing team supporting the project
mis-translated some of my text and mis-intepreted a conversation which meant unrealisitic expectations where being generated and this had upset Das Labor more than I had realised, though they heroically supported every aspect of the project. I began to realise my lack of care and focus around the context of the project and support for those putting huge effort in, and the subsequent media and art narrative for it was having a serious potentially damaging affect on the community.
I began to feel my artwork was feeding off a huge amount of good will, perhaps undeserved and for primarily my benefit. Markus generously overlooked this not just for my benefit but because he could see how much the community where benefitting from the thing they’d been dragged into. This benefit was on their terms I think, not due to the public exposure of the project and their community necessarily, but to do with them perhaps reflecting about their own resilience and what their
relationship to other institutions could be. They did not require validation from other formally defined cultural bodies but their generosity and resilience in that situation may have consolidated validation on their own terms. I should really revisit those people and see whether it had any impact for them at all.</p>
<p>Basically I’d been a careless gardener; this sounds condescending, but I realised the delicate balance between exploitation and collaboration was way off and jeopardised the aims of the project, to make visible the networks of knowledge that exist in a place even if that place has lost it’s main employer or in Das Labor and Bochum’s case, their (car) manufacturing industry. Dangerously I may have put pressure on a community to make up shortcomings elsewhere that was never their responsibility.</p>
<p>That said I think we all entered the project knowing these pitfalls and overall the Das Labor people had a great time, with the key organisers doing amazing work and visiting other spaces in Eurupe like DoESLiverpool for the first time.</p>
<h3 id="gardeninggardening-not-engineering">[gardening]:Gardening not engineering</h3>
<h4 id="people-come-for-the-equipment-and-stay-for-the-people">“People come for the equipment and stay for the people”</h4>
<p>What people sometimes don’t <em>really</em> appreciate is that it’s not <em>really</em> about lasercutters, github, python or 3d printers. Anyone can have a lasercutter and then let people use it. What’s trickier is getting the people who use it to fix it and improve it and build on it and thats the <a href="https://doesliverpool.com/slides/future-makespaces-talk-the-dark-matter-of-makerspaces/">Dark Matter of Maker Spaces</a> @amcewen talks about. People get excited about the potential of accessible technology makerspaces make available and rightly so, but the <em>dark matter</em> is the important bit.</p>
<p>Would be great if you could box it up and make it happen anywhere. And really with some work you can. Essentially it’s just dogged enthusiasm and a dash of luck and timing that causes that gravity well of interested people and things. Like actual <strong>dark matter</strong> it’s hard to see and detect (and market or research) but it actually makes up the mass of everything and stops things flying away to nothing. Add a few opinionated slightly organised people with generous natures and thats your next astronomy analogy, the <strong>background radiation</strong> of makerspaces. That’s what generates the tangential, silly, serious and often philosophical conversations you could have in DoES while waiting for a cup of tea/coffee/water/lasercut or 3d print to complete; the real ‘life-world’ of makerspaces.</p>
<p>The main thing is participation and trust: from individuals then aggregating up to a larger affect in the community, and for my upcoming project, if it happens, I hope to make it work in the right way.</p>
<h4 id="signing-off-for-the-next-wave">Signing off for the next wave</h4>
<p>Anyway soon 3dprinters will be replaced by desktop watercutters and Lo-power barbecues and all manner of technical resilience porn as more and more civic and public space and infrastructure are handed over to large unaccountable private organisations.</p>
<p>Perhaps we need some more accountable (if only on github) private and public organisations that are interested in a wider good and the model for them could be if not makerspaces or hackerspaces themselves then the entities and projects inspired by them. That’s what we are trying to do with <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a> and <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/data/heroes.html">Critical Kits</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile I hope more and more exciting things come flying out of the gravity wells of places like <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoESLiverpool</a> and all the other current and future parts of <strong>technical culture</strong> until I move back in to their <a href="https://doesliverpool.com/press-releases/is-does-liverpool-moving/">new location</a>. :)</p>
Critical Kits2016-12-10T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/12/10/critical-kits
<h2 id="the-kits-just-keep-coming">The Kits Just Keep Coming!</h2>
<p><em>reference to a recent advertorial newsletter from <a href="https://www.proto-pic.co.uk/">proto-pic</a></em></p>
<h3 id="thoughts-on-kit-cultures-for-the-critical-kits-symposium">Thoughts on kit cultures for the <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/criticalkits.html">#Critical-Kits</a> symposium</h3>
<p><img src="/images/WhatMakesAKit.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>A while back I attended Laura Pullig’s Nature &amp; Technology symposium which I <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/03/23/nature-on-github-technical-communities-in-the-landscape">talked about before</a> and one of the things that came up was how Neil Winterburn, Laura and I noticed everyone seemed to be talking about ‘kits’ and this was the beginning of what’s become the <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/criticalkits.html">#Critical-Kits</a> project.</p>
<p>8 years previously I remember discussing with the <a href="http://owlproject.com/">Owl Project</a> in 2008 how they could sell their <a href="http://owlproject.com/iLogs">iLogs</a> in the FACT shop but as a kit with a workshop to make them, well before the <em>maker</em> meme really had any traction. Arduino’s where not really out there; Steve Symons had to build his own platform ‘muio’ to help make the technology based work the Owls required.</p>
<p>Artists making kits or building systems of some kind now seems to be a standard practice for those using technology and we wondered what was behind this and what opportunities or problems this might raise for artists.</p>
<p>Neil Winterburn jokingly tweeted recently that I’d tied myself to the mast of maker culture, referring of course to Turners’ hardcore experiential research for his storm studies and paintings.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">In preparation for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/critkits?src=hash">#critkits</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/cheapjack">@cheapjack</a> spent the past 5 years tying himself to the master of maker culture <a href="https://twitter.com/DoESLiverpool">@DoESLiverpool</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/weeknotes?src=hash">#weeknotes</a></p>&mdash; Neil Winterburn (@onthepennines) <a href="https://twitter.com/onthepennines/status/803549118681452545">November 29, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p><br /></p>
<p>I’m not comparing myself to Turner here, (and quickly tweeted back a bad github geek pun to try make that clear!) but it’s coincidental how Turner has always been for me to be a pre-cursor for ideas around ‘modern-ness’ in art.</p>
<p>His sceptical interest in emerging 19th century science &amp; technology, and friendship with people like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville">Mary Sommerville</a> has always fascinated me and although a classic romantic ‘auteur/artist/genius’ seemed to be trying to access an underlying reality of light and experience, his research efforts travelling and embedding himself to capture this ‘experience’ of landscapes legendary.</p>
<p><img src="/images/critkits1.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>I do think that many artists interested in using technology often try to build deeper relationships with the wider technical cultures around it; and this <em>is</em> a kind of ‘mast tying’ and a pretty standard form of artist’s research.</p>
<p>Equally I think there is a tendancy to refer and re-present (rather than <em>represent</em>) elements or speculations around a technology or scientific discovery as an artistic response and in some case as a general form of practice. I think this is ethically suspect and can lead to ultimately ineffectual work; the classic is</p>
<ul>
<li>Speculate on the implications of blah blah</li>
<li>Start a dialogue around blah blah</li>
<li>Taking blah blah as a starting point the artist uses a fictional meta narrative alongisde the real blah blah</li>
</ul>
<p>Responding to a technical culture through research or some form of participation in that culture even on a superficial level, rather than using technical facts out of context as a subject I think leads to more complex work that can be built upon</p>
<p>When I was interested in sound based art I tried to engage with that culture through <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk">SoundNetwork</a> and began to meet artists like the Owl Project. Working with them was a key moment for me, their practice of research and independent making and building their own ‘systems’ for making their work made complete sense.</p>
<p>They did not just ‘use’ technology they made themselves part of it’s culture through designing and building; to generate a ‘kit’ for themselves to further their work. The <a href="http://muio.org/muio_in">muio</a> framework, performances and transparent methods for how they made things embodied their practice. But they did this with a genuine admiration for technical culture not an exploitative intervention approach.</p>
<p>I will never forget that when developing their MIDI Sound lathe, a pre-cursor for their massive <a href="http://www.flowmill.org/home">Flow</a> installation they were all incredibly excited about a research visit to a wood turning festival: it showed a real love for craft and care and a regard for community.</p>
<p><img src="/images/critkits2.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>I think that’s at the core of artists using or referencing kits: building a system to make your work can embody not just a process but an ethos and it can become a form of credential. Building a ‘kit’ or a system can also be part of a critical response to the proprietary tools we are sold as artists. The tools we use are often the tools we are <em>allowed</em> to use; dig a bit deeper and you can find things like <a href="https://www.wireshark.org/">Wireshark</a>, <a href="https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet">Re-decentralize</a>, <a href="https://inkscape.org/en/">Inkscape</a> and <a href="https://kitnic.it/In">Kitnic</a>. In the same way as artists use ‘labs’ it’s a kind of validation for creative work; it proves a use-value for your practice.</p>
<p>I also think the urge for artists to engage in cultures outside of art, refers back to the idea of <strong>‘natural philosophers’</strong> before the term <em>scientist</em> was coined from <em>artist</em></p>
<p><img src="/images/rivershrimps.jpg" width="300" /></p>
<p>I recently ran a <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">ShrimpCraft</a> workshop with <a href="http://www.playfulanywhere.co.uk/">PlayfulAnywhere</a> on the banks of the Leeds/Liverpool canal and found a print of Turner’s study of the canal just 5 minutes along from our workshop location which led to an idea for an unsubmitted proposal for <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/D/D12/D12257_10.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>Taking the ‘critical making’ idea, I wanted to frame it within this history of late 18th century notions of ‘natural philosophy’ (when art and science where ‘closer’ and canals a major distribution network). It also echoed my experience involved in the <a href="http://www.swanpedalo.org/">Open Source Swan Pedalo</a> community, also initiated by <a href="http://re-dock.org/">re-dock</a> and my work with Amanda Steggel and Elizabeth Weihe for <a href="http://currently.no">Currently</a> and <a href="https://github/cheapjack/Co-Tidal">Co-Tidal</a>.</p>
<p>I proposed using this now redundant distribution network, the Leeds/Liverpool canal to explore a kind of <strong>‘slow-manufacturing’</strong>, as a response to artists involved in kit and maker cultures. Make kits that carefully include the contexts for their use within both their design and documentation; any making would be connected to contexts of communities whose relationships we would develop along the canal’s path. There would be a kit per ‘node’ along the canal, a node being a context about local industry which would contribute to Adrian McEwen’s fascinating <a href="http://indie.mcqn.com/map">mapping of re-distributed manufacturing</a> a project contextualising manufacture and the nuances of local supply chains.</p>
<p><img src="/images/critkits2.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>In many ways the logical implication and next step of kit and maker culture would be for makers and artists to begin to manufacture things and start making and distributing at ‘scale’. A few factors meant this slow-manufacture idea remained a proposal but all of this kind of thinking drifted into the <a href="http://criticalkits.re-dock.org">#Critical-Kits</a> symposium.</p>
<p>This was another great opportunity to work with <a href="http://www.neilwinterburn.net/about/">Neil Winterburn</a> and <a href="http://re-dock.org">re-dock</a> who I’ve always thought of as peers and representatives of art &amp; technology done right, with a focus on community without losing critical elements.</p>
<p><img src="/images/critkits3.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>For the symposium we wanted to refer broadly to a culture of critical thinking and a culture of kits and apply them to artists who work in participatory art and technology to reveal some opportunities for the better documentation and so communication and ultimately validation of that kind of work.</p>
<p>You can get a <a href="https://gitlab.com/redock/critical-kits/blob/master/resources/print/Handout.md">full explanation here</a></p>
<p><img src="/images/critkits4.jpg" width="400" /></p>
<p>One thing that came out of it for me is that some kits are not necessarily fulfilling the implications and opportunities of mass distribution: in some ways they just embodied a complex practice or narrative around a participatory project, community or technology use. In a sense the kit has the potential to tell a story better than a youtube video or a blogpost.</p>
<p>We also wanted to show that there was already an artist tradition of taking ideas from kits, manufacturing and mass distribution. I would have liked to have dug into technical culture’s traditions and precursors a bit more which I think we can do at future Critical Kit events.</p>
<p>Finally what I’ve been reflecting at <strong>Critical-kits</strong>, <strong>Maker Assembly</strong>, <strong>re-distributed manufacturing</strong> and that idea of <strong>slow-manufacture</strong> on the canal and the many other growing, exciting making-culture community activity out there, is that one of the reasons many of us are able to develop electronic kits and open source things at all is to do with macro economics and crucial ‘price points’ not to mention the privilege of knowledge or time to generate it.</p>
<p>These things put the degree of control you have over what you do into perspective: Can you only ever really respond to the market or can you start to influence it?</p>
<p>As influential as Maker culture is and it’s integration into everything from school, libraries, manufacturing, the high street and academia is it ever really more than another specialist subset niche market dependent on vast volumes of production and e-waste to get tools and components into the hands of enough people? And does that make us <em>really</em> no more than <strong>users</strong>, or at best <strong>shop stewards</strong> with limited powers and not the <strong>system administrators</strong> of our lives, societies and futures given their dependance on technology?</p>
The Continuing Journey Of A Media Lab: I Went To A Media/Art Lab And All I Got Was This Lousy Tote Bag2016-08-18T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/08/18/the-continuing-journey-of-a-media-lab-i-went-to-a-mediaart-lab-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-tote-bag
<p><img src="/images/DigitalMurderLabs.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>I just received a shiny book of pictures of people at <a href="http://www.digitalmedialabs.org/">Digital Media Labs 2015</a> and thought it timely to reflect on this brilliant project and on the artist lab in general.</p>
<p>I’ve a funny relationship with using the term <strong>lab</strong>. My first lab I could say I ever did any work in for art was as artist in residence at a Glue Factory in my hometown of Widnes. <strong>Croda Colloids</strong> made high grade proteins and had a lab where you could analyse the protein they were making. It felt good to be allowed into an important and serious place that needed safety shoes glasses and how to use an emergency shower in case you got Hydrofloric acid on you. I’ll be honest and thought this is what being an arist is all about, wearing a white coat and wellies and making <a href="https://vimeo.com/2117190">words in bacteria</a> on SVHS in an industrial laboratory.</p>
<p>Later on I worked for over 10 years as a freelancer (and still do) for <a href="http://fact.co.uk">FACT</a> and often used their ‘MediaLab’ well before their current lab which is actually a lab, <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/get-involved/factlab.aspx">FACTLAb</a> which is currently inhabited by recent DM-Labber the awesome <a href="https://twitter.com/radamar">Rademas Ajna</a>: The ‘medialab’ was quite typically for the 2000’s well before the <strong>Maker</strong> meme, a bespoke clean white room full of desks, Apple macs,
wifi, speakers and projectors. Over the years I did surround sound, woodworking, gardening, youtubing, MC’ing, blogging, editing, hacking, minecrafting, music and bid writing in that white room with all ages and all backgrounds with many other brilliant artists and people. In the mid 2000’s I setup a temporary Art lab in Medlock Primary school, <strong>MedLab</strong> to do science inspired workshops and animations, make glitchy speed garage and <strong>kraftwork</strong> cover versions for school assemblies and think about the primary school of the future. There we decorated a part of the school to look a bit ‘labby’ and used Sci-Fi ‘futuristic’ looking furniture and shelving.</p>
<p>So off and on I’ve used the conceit of a lab as a framework for experimentation. Reflecting on this I think as artists we fetishise the lab concept a little; it lends us some seriousness and validates experimentaton somehow; I’m always going on about how art’s role in the world is in flux and perhaps is having an identity crisis: or at least I feel like that. Maybe it’s not an identity crisis but a <strong>validation</strong> crisis. As political forces push art and other forms of creative or critical thinking/practice ever further to the margins, maybe appropriating the <strong>lab</strong> term validates and lends credibility to a field that not everyone ‘gets’ or thinks important. It also raises the opportunity to make a ‘lab’ and a methdodology on artist’s own terms.</p>
<p>But I worry about this appropriation somehow. Art should be as important as science and any other human endeavour but is using the lab model the best format we can think of? Science and engineering pretty much validates itself by it’s utility and our societies relience on it for infrastructure and indeed those in power’s incessant exploitation of it. Should art have to borrow that format? Or maybe that’s the point? Borrow &amp; bastardise, hack and modify and re-form in unexpected ways; something
like <a href="http://hackteria.org/">hackteria</a>, <a href="https://publiclab.org/">Public Lab</a> or <a href="https://art.washington.edu/people/tad-hirsch">Tad Hirsch</a>’s <a href="http://publicpractice.org/wp/">Public Practice</a>.</p>
<p>Art for me is the possibility to resist the predominant mainstream mass media content providers; generally they present surface presentations of how the world is: if we can make <strong>any</strong> spaces to encourage creative critical thought then worrying about it’s format is perhaps unnecessary. I suppose my concern is that the over use of a term and format can just homogenise and then marginilise true experimentation and exploration; it’s not enough to just call it a <strong>lab</strong>, a <strong>makerspace</strong> or <strong>accelerator</strong> or <strong>catapult</strong> or <strong>trebuchet</strong> or <strong>whatever</strong> and magic innovation will happen; it needs a little ‘something’. A bit of thought, a bit of care, a bit of space, a bit of support, a degree of openness and a bit of just letting things happen or not happen.</p>
<p>This is the <strong>dark matter</strong> of a successful <strong>lab</strong>; its not making it look like a lab, it’s having a diverse mix of people, supporters, technicians, mentors and cooks; it’s having a sensibility of people doing interesting work who can get on with others or disrupt things. And then it’s the people organising it and the background radiation of the culture of the host organisation, <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/">Octopus Collective</a> and <a href="http://fonfestival.org/">FON
Festival</a> who are well versed in being open and committed to ideas, letting them brew and letting them grow. Thinking on what <strong>DMLabs</strong> is made me think of <a href="http://www.mcqn.com/">Adrian McEwen</a>’s blogpost about the <a href="https://doesliverpool.com/slides/future-makespaces-talk-the-dark-matter-of-makerspaces/">Dark Matter of Maker Spaces</a> and I think <strong>Digital Media Labs</strong> has that dark matter <em>something</em>; it’s not a shiny new build lab and it doesn’t have <strong>all</strong> the latest things: but it’s a starting point and a growing network and I think it’s had a subtle transformative affect on art practice across the North. It’s not often you leave a lab and then continue to work with the people you met there for another 6 years.</p>
<p>Part of the lab meme is isolation from the world outside; <strong>DMLabs</strong> happens on a lesser visited western point of the North. And that isolation from the big heavily subscribed and culturally colonised metropoles could be a positive factor. A good writer friend of mine <strong>Shivdeep Grewal</strong> said <code class="highlighter-rouge">"Artists just need to do nothing"</code> and I still think that’s true; in a world where we can get bogged down with emails, contracts, social media strategy, wordpress updates and endless chasing of funding, <strong>DMLabs</strong> makes you re-connect with whatever your art practice is: it gives you that space to do ‘nothing’ but by doing things with other people in the same boat; sometimes literally, as each <strong>DMLab</strong> seems to involve a boat trip or a swim or something.</p>
<p>And whatever people make it has value because of the time and space to think, develop and explore something. For me especially, it was access to other people and the working relationships I had with them after. Here’s a list of just some of the things that happened after to me with people after the first <a href="http://www.digitalmedialabs.org/HULL2010/">DMLabs</a></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I met Dave Lynch and over a fag break talked about making <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/?q=node/444">Crazy Golf</a> as a way of learning physical computing, which became <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/Fairground%20Frameworks">Fairground Frameworks</a> and went onto make a <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/09/10/last-month-worked-with-artist-dave-lynch-to-create">Balloon Vortex</a> and <a href="http://github.com/cheapjack/nauticalanalogue/">Nautical Analogue</a> together.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/_johnoshea">John O’Shea</a> &amp; <a href="http://re-dock.org/">re-dock</a> bought a <a href="http://www.swanpedalo.org/">Swan Pedalo</a> on EBay over dinner and open sourced it and later on I hacked it for <a href="http://currently.no">currently.no</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I continue to work with <a href="http://glennboulter.net">Glenn Boulter</a> and <a href="http://benedictphillips.co.uk/">Benedict Phillips</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I commissioned DMLab artist <a href="http://ruthlevene.co.uk/">Bob Levene</a> and Glenn for <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/IWalkTheLine">I Walk The Line</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Gemma Latham used ECG headsets to control Minecraft with me for <a href="http://github.com/cheapjack/CloudMaker">CloudMaker</a> and developed <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/Co-Tidal">Co-Tidal</a> with me and <a href="http://www.mcqn.net/mcfilter/">Adrian McEwen</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I met <a href="http://www.jamesmedd.co.uk/">James Medd</a> again at <strong>DMLabs</strong> and helped make <a href="http://github.com/cheapjack/nauticalanalogue/">Nautical Analogue</a> with <a href="http://www.davelynch.net/">Dave Lynch</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Conversations with James led to him inviting <a href="http://aipanic.com/projects/wobbler">Line Wobbler</a> to his <a href="http://awkwardarcade.co.uk/">Awkward Arcade</a> project</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I worked with Glenn Boulter and <a href="http://slyrabbit.net">Hwa Young</a> to make <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/ok-sparks/">Ok-Sparks</a> and <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a> and worked together on <a href="http://www.textadventuretime.co.uk/">Text Adventure Time</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I invited <a href="http://thecreativeexchange.org/people/ben-dalton">Ben Dalton</a> to my <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/ViewingArea">Viewing Area</a> conference and we ran a <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/whats-on/current/tor-toys.aspx">TorToys Workshop</a> at <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoES Liverpool</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I still meet up with <a href="https://twitter.com/sc_r">Stu Childs</a> at various Maker events, and really <strong>DMLabs</strong> was where I first started to really engage with the Maker community as it gathered momentum as a <em>thing</em></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I made a <strong>DMLabs</strong> Box using <strong>DMLab</strong> participant <strong>Aaron Oomlout’s</strong> <a href="https://github.com/oomlout/oomlout-OOBB">OOBB</a> to display the content of <strong>DMLabs 2014</strong></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Finally perhaps the best thing about being involved in <strong>DMLabs</strong> is nominating someone for it; so they can do <em>nothing</em> in the best and most productive way possible with inspiring creative company on a lesser known peninsula of the North West.</p>
If I Were The Ocean2016-08-11T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/08/11/if-i-were-the-ocean
<p><img src="/images/cotidal1.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>Last month I spent 3 days in Oslo for the latest event of the ongoing <a href="http://currently.no">Currently</a> project which I initiated with artist and curator <a href="http://testingtesting.org/">Amanda Steggell</a> back in 2012. <strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong> is Amanda’s biggest public exhibition for the project to date and builds on four years of research with a growing network of artists.</p>
<p><strong>Currently</strong> has been one of the most challenging and rewarding projects I think I have ever been part of and over the years I’ve met many Norwegian artists and friends that I have grown to respect and believe in their work. I’ve also been lucky enough to involve many UK artists and other creative peers in the project who make some of the most exciting technology led work in the UK.</p>
<p>We’ve worked directly with <a href="http://muio.org/">Steve Symons</a>, John O’Shea, Simon Derwent, <a href="http://janawinderen.com/">Jana Winderen</a>, Hillevi Munthe, <a href="http://mcqn.com/">Adrian McEwen</a>, <a href="http://www.gemmamaylatham.co.uk/">Gemma May Latham</a> and involved the advice, expertise and component source of the <a href="http://noc.ac.uk/">National Oceanographic Centre</a>, <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/">Octopus Collective</a>, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/natural-england">Natural England</a>, Simon of SeaLevel Research, Cefn Hoile of <a href="start.shrimping.it">Shrimping.it</a>, <a href="http://www.pointfive.co/content/about">PointFive</a> architects and worked with hosts <a href="http://www.statictrading.com/">STATIC</a>, <a href="http://oggcamp.org/">OggCamp2013</a> and <strong>National Museums Liverpool</strong> and more recently the <a href="http://marmuseum.no">Norwegian Maritime Museum</a>.</p>
<p>Originally we envisioned Currently as a single epic sea and freshwater journey trawling for folk tales, stories, experiences, images, salt and fresh water data, AIS ship paths and artistic meta data across the shelf sea between Oslo and Liverpool in something called the <a href="http://www.currently.no/ghostnet/">GhostNet</a>. Over four years and 2 hackweekends in Oslo and Liverpool supported by the <a href="http://www.kulturradet.no/english">Norwegian Arts Council</a>, <strong>Currently</strong> has evolved into an ongoing collaboration across a loosely distributed network of artists, engineers, computer scientists, boat builders and sailors.</p>
<p>Building on these hackdays network member, sailor &amp; project artist <strong>Elizabeth Weihe</strong> sailed to the UK/Norway twice while Amanda and I developed a range of open source tools and workshops in the UK and Norway while other members developed artistic processes independently. So not a single journey, but an epic one nonetheless.</p>
<p>And the <strong>GhostNet</strong> along the lines of the original vision was ultimately never built beyond prototype: instead the diverse activity we have developed and delivered over the project period has collected the flotsam and jetsam of data the net was always meant to collect; but in a way that is free from a single physical journey and larger spectacle based events. Instead it’s become a <em>GhostNetwork</em>, with many nodes contributing independently and in forms of pop-up workshops
with a variety of partners. The <strong>GhostNet</strong> referred to fishing nets lost at sea that continue to ‘fish’, ultimately the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">ShrimpCraft</a> project using the excellent kits at <a href="http://start.shrimping.it">Shrimping.it</a> continues to make people think about water based data and how they can interpret it, something the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/Co-Tidal">Co~Tidal</a> project tries to move forward.</p>
<p>Currently has generated along the way:</p>
<ul>
<li>Elizabeth Weihe’s <a href="http://www.currently.no/currently-15/currently-14-sets-her-sails/">journey across the sea</a>,</li>
<li>stories of the relationship between the UK and Norway,</li>
<li>Water samples that generate sea-salt-crystal paintings,</li>
<li>conversations and lectures,</li>
<li>shipAIS pathways,</li>
<li>photographs,</li>
<li>Experimental Workshops and <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">tools for the water curious</a> across the UK and Norway</li>
<li>Tools for <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/Co-Tidal">the tidal curious</a></li>
<li>A design and prototype for a floating sound installation,</li>
<li>traditional open-source soap.</li>
<li><strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong> exhibition week, Oslo, Norway</li>
</ul>
<p>All of this work was presented as thought provoking accessible activity to the public in a range of coastal and land locked settings at a range of scales, and stages of development. It’s for sure generated some long standing working relationships rare for the often high project turnover artists are encouraged to do, in the UK at least. Like any good sea journey preperation is key and although we have not made this single journey we have nevertheless achieved our objectives; using artistic research to communicate and articulate the human relationship to the sea through journeys by sea land and air to workshops in Barrow, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bergen and Oslo</p>
<p><strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong> was the first major public exhibition, programme of activity and new work based on this four years of research: and in many ways it was like <strong>Currently</strong> had tipped it’s <strong>GhostNet</strong> out on the ‘dock’ of the <strong>Maritime Museum</strong> for the public to see and the extent of the ‘catch’ was suddenly vast.</p>
<p>This time round on the UK side I worked with <a href="http://mcqn.net">Adrian McEwen</a> and <a href="gemmamaylatham.com">Gemma May Latham</a> to develop the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/Co-Tidal">Co~Tidal</a> project, a system for generating simple patterns made from traditional Norwegian embroidery and Tidal Height data from a buoy in Oslo harbour generated from the exhibition visitor’s birth date.</p>
<p>Like many things this idea started from a conversation with <strong>Cefn Hoile</strong> while packing up at <a href="https://lpoolmakefest.org/">Liverpool MakeFest 2016</a> about how he was looking at making some kind of <strong>Tidal Clock</strong> kit based on real local tide data for <a href="http://start.shrimping.it">Shrimping.it</a>.</p>
<p>We didn’t quite realise this or have had chance to work much further on that yet; maybe for the next <strong>Currently</strong> hackday! We did source a cheap peristaltic pump powered by DC motor and have made an openSCAD model for a 3d printed bouy to float inside some transparent tubing to visualise ‘live’ tide data. We brought this along to <strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong>. Unfortunately, we were so preoccupied with <strong>Co~Tidal</strong> and our embroidery we did not get to prototyping at the exhibition which was the original plan or work with Cefn futher yet.</p>
<p>Like <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">ShrimpCraft</a> <strong>Co-Tidal</strong> uses simple largely open source tools to engage people with the <strong>Data Literacy</strong> I talk about alot but applying this literacy to the context and awareness of the human connection to the sea.</p>
<p>Amanda’s title <strong>If I Were the Ocean</strong> has been chosen carefully; where the abstracted GhostNet idea fitted with current trends in artistic practice that used data-visualisation, what has always really mattered most to <strong>Currently</strong> was to tell a contemporary human story. I believe we can harnass the vast sea of marine data to discover things and forensically reveal environmental issues and hidden marine histories; but how to make that data <strong>matter</strong> to people so it’s part of their identity and their experience and even their hands and hearts is a different thing. I think <strong>If I Were the Ocean</strong> attempts to place your identity and the work presented invited you to make, smell, see, talk and experience the physical material of the sea.</p>
<p><img src="/images/cotidal2.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>Our response to <strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong> was to make something that would make even the most easily accessible and simple marine data meaningful in some way. Adrian known for his work in the internet of things but often not his knowledge of folk music, reminded me of how the structure of Sea Shanty’s reflected actual processes at sea and in researching <strong>Co-Tidal</strong> we wondered about embroidery and knitting patterns like the ‘Arran’ knit and how they in some way represent the sea, the coastline or a journey.</p>
<p>Gemma May Lathams work investigating the <strong>‘act of making’</strong> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)">Flow</a> and how that affects our engagement and knowledge made sense here; we are used to standard ways of reading digital information; a graph on a screen etc but what if you had to make the graph? And not just draw it but embroider it? Drawing is often something people perceive as hard and requiring a good deal of knowledge and certainly a degree of confidence, but I think embroidery somehow taps into a deeper domestic memory of making that’s a part of our identity.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to make clear when talking about <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a> that the <em>domestic</em> is not a negative term, although perhaps it is often used that way; home and how we live and thrive there is fundamental to human happiness and in some ways <strong>Currently</strong> reminds us that the sea is not just a place between: it’s a way of life and the real home of many who live on the coast and depend on it.</p>
<p>So we decided we could get people to make some data visualisation based on their own identity; and as something to start with, something everyone has and knows from the earliest age and that we could get from them with the most basic of language: their birthdate.</p>
<p>We built an interface for the public to dial in their month and year of birth, and print out the timings of high and low tides from <a href="https://www.worldtides.info/">World Tides</a> and then embroider patterns or <strong>Tidal Glyphs</strong> to represent this data, the data disrupting a standard Norwegian knitting pattern encoded into the same <strong>asci</strong> data frame. The <strong>‘act of making’</strong> became something that focussed the visitor and gave them a reason to hang around and talk about the sea, where they were from in Norway, what marine data is and what Currently is and to spend time in the <strong>If I Were the Ocean</strong> space.</p>
<p>We all know the game of the standard art/museum exhibition. You look, you read, you digest, if someone is there you engage; but careful! not too much; you don’t want to waste a strangers time: you don’t know them after all. <strong>Co-Tidal</strong>, Amanda’s soap making workshop and the delicate salt crystals of Elizabeth’s paintings based on her water samples from journeys to the UK, the boat trips and readings all disrupted the standard exhibition model so you not so much wanted to stay, but felt able to.</p>
<p>And as usual when making gets you into that ‘zone’ you communicate differently, you relax as the focus unconsciously gives you permission to stay in one place and talk. I learnt more from gallery visitors than most exhibitions that weekend and it reminded me of the kind of conversations we had with the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/buildyourown">Build Your Own Project</a> with <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoES Liverpool</a> and when making our <strong>ShrimpCraft</strong> kits, although assembling a breadboard arduino is not quite the <strong>tribal memory</strong> embroidery seems to be, at least, not yet.</p>
<p>As always with <strong>Currently</strong> the experience by the sea and thinking about it inspired me no end. All 3 of us UK artists said we felt we got something out of it we did not realise we needed and it’s unclear where this latest research will lead us.</p>
<p>Perhaps a vision for the Mersey Estuary? Could we replace quad-bike obsessed teens to help out at the docks on open-source jet skis? Does everything coastal have to be tourism? Can scousers live on and for the water again?</p>
<p>The first <strong>Currenlty</strong> hackday used the <a href="http://www.swanpedalo.org/">Open Source Swan Pedalo</a> in a giant indoor temporary swimming pool as inspiration to focus the artist’s attention to the water. Like Currently, The swan pedalo project attempted to give people, artists or otherwise, the tools and platforms to engage with waterways using something familiar to even the most land locked of people.</p>
<p><strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong> is the culmination of everything from that first pedalo journey and it is indeed an epic and diverse one. It reveals just how inspiring the sea is: to ignore it and not experience something of the material that makes up most of the planet and keeps us alive in so many ways then you’re missing something really human.</p>
<p>That many of us may have lost their connections to seafaring and river faring culture or the waterways under our noses and under our motorways is a real shame.</p>
<p>The <strong>Currently</strong> project will continue with some care, some making, some thinking and some contact with seawater or freshwater to make these connections come alive, and the <strong>GhostNet-work</strong> will carry on trawling long after <strong>If I Were The Ocean</strong> exhibition ends and it’s modular exhibition stands of reclaimed pallettes end up distributed around Oslo’s harbours, marinas and moorings.</p>
RF Craft to RailCraft2016-08-09T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/08/09/rf-craft-to-railcraft
<p><img src="/images/RF-RailCraft.gif" width="600" /></p>
<p>I’ll be leading on a series of workshops at <a href="http://msimanchester.org.uk/whats-on/activity/makefest-2016">MSIMakeFest</a> on August 20th &amp; 21st using the Raspberry Pi version of Minecraft and Martin O’Hanlon’s <code class="highlighter-rouge">mcpi</code> API to celebrate the first railway journeys between Liverpool and Manchester.</p>
<p>Over the past few years a community of makers, developers, artists, designers, gamers and educators have been exploring interesting ways to bring the ‘real world’ into Minecraft, which I’ve been calling <strong>The Minecraft Of Things</strong>. Some of the most interesting work has used the Raspberry Pi version of the game and the marvelous <a href="https://www.python.org/">python</a> Minecraft API, <code class="highlighter-rouge">mcpi</code> distributed and supported by some great tutorials and code written by Martin
O’Hanlon on his <a href="http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/">website</a> and in his <a href="http//eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-111894691X,descCd-buy.html">book</a> he wrote with <a href="http://blog.whaleygeek.co.uk/about-me/">David Whale</a>.</p>
<p>For MakeFest ew’ve made a working train you can control with a minecraft Radio messaging system, <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Craft">RF-Craft</a>, to work with some special laser-cut buttons and augmented oil lamps from the <strong>MSI handling collection</strong>. Then there’s a carriage building game for 3 players and a python model of a level crossing. See the MSI website for details of how to take part. All this is within view of a RailCraft/TrainCraft Minecraft Mod made by <strong>Mr
Brutal</strong> a well known minecraft modder who has modelled an amazing world inspired by the earliest Liverpool to Manchester rail journeys.</p>
<p>I’ve been working on a few projects that use mcpi like this, to share ideas around the Internet Of Things and basic programming. There is a lot of momentum to <strong>teach kids code</strong> but I prefer to think of what people are doing in the maker/coding/education world as a sort of <strong>data literacy</strong>. It would be unrealistic to think that young people taking part in this sort of thing will be using python 2.7/3 in their jobs of the future; but doing the sort of level of programming the Raspberry Pi and <code class="highlighter-rouge">mcpi</code> community gets you used to some basic ideas in computer science. Most importantly playing with python in the context of Minecraft gives you a framework to do the most useful kind of learning: learning by design &amp; experimentation, in a language (Minecraft) that you are comfortable with.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most important thing I think is useful to anything is designing a solution to a set of problems or questions: set yourself the problem of making a train that behaves like a real train from 1m virtual blocks and it takes a fair bit of creative thinking to make a solution you are happy with.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to do this with a few projects all of which I’ve made open source and distributed on github, a code sharing platform <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/Cloudmaker">Cloudmaker</a>, <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Craft">RF-Craft</a>, <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/whitcraft/">WhitCraft</a> and <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">ShrimpCraft</a>.</p>
<p>That’s another concept I think learning with Minecraft gets over, and it’s something not all adults understand or see the value in: the concept of sharing knowledge and information in a way that makes sense, is human friendly and well documented. By coding and making you are interacting and communicating with the world but in a more deeper way than, say watching a video or sharing an image or sending a text based message on social media.</p>
<p>All the content of the workshops at MSIMakeFest2016 is based on other people’s work and knowledge in the same way that Stephenson’s Rocket or a particular rail gauge on some track does not belong to just one engineer. Yes there are famous talented engineers who innovate and are first at something but often they implement and build on the work of people before them; Einstein needed Maxwell and Tim Berners Lee needed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force">IEFC</a> to build <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol">TCP</a></p>
<p>There’s a bit of a myth that Minecraft is a universal accessible world of creativity and in some ways it <strong>is</strong> but this creativity is in the diversity of the way you can play/hack/modify/customise/mod the game. Many of the amazing stuff you see made by modders like Mr Brutal who FACT and MSI commissioned for this year’s MSIMakeFest need a bit of work to get running with tools like <a href="http://www.enginehub.org/">Engine Hub</a> and <a href="http://files.minecraftforge.net/">Forge</a> and of course it all depends on whether you’re playing on PC/Mac/Linux/XBox/PS4/Android/iOS/RaspberryPi or running Forge/Bukkit/CanaryMod/MinecraftEdu/Pocketmine servers.</p>
<p>What is awesome about mcpi and the Raspberry Pi version of it is that it takes you back to basics of version v0.1.1 alpha with a minimum of setting up so what modifications you do are limited around using python and mcpi to make your mods programmatically. It is also on cheap hardware with a big community. It means people have to forget how they may play minecraft normally and design something in a familiar yet new way. And that’s the other myth of Creativity that it’s all about freedom, it’s not, it is often the limitations of a medium that drive creativity.</p>
<p>Come along to MakeFest and learn more, build virtual railway infrastructure and see Mr Brutal and the local Minecraft mapping community’s amazing creations!!</p>
<h2 id="example-code">Example Code</h2>
<p>Below is some example python code for a <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/">Raspbian</a> Raspberry Pi disk image. There are lot’s of resources out there to help you get started with using the Raspberry Pi, so I will leave the internet and the link above to fill you in on that.</p>
<p>To use it you will need to download Martin O’Hanlon’s <a href="https://github.com/martinohanlon/mcpi">mcpi code here</a> and save it to your home folder, <code class="highlighter-rouge">/home/pi</code>.
You can use the built in Pi <code class="highlighter-rouge">Midori</code> browser to download it or the commandline:</p>
<p>You can also clone the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Rail-Craft">RF-Rail-Craft-Repo</a> repo and you can run a version of the installation yourself</p>
<p>Open a Terminal on your Pi (it’s in accessories) and type</p>
<p>Type <code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ ls</code> and it will list your files in your home folder
In the following, just type the text after the <code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ </code> part, thats just the command line prompt and shows you who you are logged in as, in this case, <code class="highlighter-rouge">/home</code>.</p>
<p>download Martin’s <a href="https://github.com/martinohanlon/mcpi">mcpi code</a> with <code class="highlighter-rouge">git</code> if you use it or <code class="highlighter-rouge">wget</code> and save it to your home folder, <code class="highlighter-rouge">/home/pi</code> and unzip it.</p>
<p><code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ wget https://github.com/martinohanlon/mcpi/archive/master.zip</code></p>
<p>You might need to install <code class="highlighter-rouge">unzip</code>
Do that with <code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ sudo apt-get install unzip</code>
Once it’s installed unzip with <code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ unzip master.zip</code></p>
<p>You should now have a <code class="highlighter-rouge">mcpi-master</code> or <code class="highlighter-rouge">mcpi-master.zip</code> folder so unzip it and go inside that folder</p>
<p><code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ cd mcpi-master</code></p>
<p>Then download the file below with the command line on your Pi with</p>
<p><code class="highlighter-rouge">wget http://soundnetwork.org.uk/misc/cheapjack/carriage.py.zip</code>
or from this link <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/misc/cheapjack/carriage.py.zip">here</a></p>
<p>unzip <code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ unzip carriage.py.zip</code></p>
<p>Or you can get it straight from git <code class="highlighter-rouge">pi$ wget https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Rail-Craft/blob/master/carriage.py</code></p>
<p><strong>Make sure the <code class="highlighter-rouge">carriage.py</code> is in the same folder as mcpi so your programme can find it when it imports the module</strong></p>
<p>Now open Minecraft in the Pi Main Menu and go to a new world and find where you want to build some carriages, you may want to clear a space</p>
<p>Now go back to your Terminal and Run your python code with
<code class="highlighter-rouge">python carriage.py</code></p>
<p>If all goes well and the mcpi folder you downloaded is in the same place as your carriage.py code, you will see the message <code class="highlighter-rouge">"Hello Minecraft World!"</code> followed by some other messages in the game console.</p>
<p>Yay! now try hack the <code class="highlighter-rouge">CarriageTemplate</code> function or use it to make more carriage chassis and start building some classic rolling stock through the ages! Have a look at <a href="mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r155.html">Mike’s Engineering Wonders Site</a> for some historical tips.</p>
<p>If you get stuck come to MSIMakeFest2016 and we will help try you out!</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="c">#!/usr/python</span>
<span class="c"># import mcpi, you will need the mcpi directory to be local to the carriage.py ie in the same directory.</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">mcpi</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">minecraft</span>
<span class="c"># connect to the game locally, ie on your pi</span>
<span class="n">mc</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">minecraft</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Minecraft</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">create</span><span class="p">()</span>
<span class="c">#Define a Carriage function</span>
<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">CarriageTemplate</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">length</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">width</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">numberOfCarriages</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">material</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">materialType</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="n">length</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">length</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span>
<span class="c"># main carriage chassis</span>
<span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">i</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="nb">range</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="n">numberOfCarriages</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setBlocks</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span><span class="o">+</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">))</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">length</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">width</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">material</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">materialType</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="c">#Make gaps</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setBlocks</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">length</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">length</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">width</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="c"># Make 4 wheels</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setBlock</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span> <span class="o">-</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">57</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setBlock</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">length</span> <span class="o">-</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span> <span class="o">-</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">57</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setBlock</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">width</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="mi">57</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">setBlock</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">xpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">i</span><span class="o">*</span><span class="n">length</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">length</span> <span class="o">-</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">ypos</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">zpos</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">width</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="mi">57</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="c"># Send a message to minecraft console</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">postToChat</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"Hello Minecraft World!"</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">postToChat</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"We need rolling stock!"</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">postToChat</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"Lets get building carriages!"</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">playerTilePos</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">player</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getTilePos</span><span class="p">()</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">postToChat</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"TilePos is "</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="nb">str</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">playerTilePos</span><span class="p">))</span>
<span class="c"># Remember our Carriage function above needs the values Starting xpos, ypos, zpos, length of carriage, width of carriage, numberOfCarriages, blockmaterial, blockmaterialType.</span>
<span class="c"># Call our Carriage Function with all the parameters we want</span>
<span class="n">CarriageTemplate</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">playerTilePos</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">x</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">playerTilePos</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">y</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">playerTilePos</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">z</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">6</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">42</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="c">#print to minecraft console so we know what we did</span>
<span class="n">mc</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">postToChat</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"Building Carriage chassis!"</span><span class="p">)</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Follow the action at MakeFest on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/msimakefest">#MSIMakeFest</a></p>
Ok Sparks: Domestic Science and Network Resilience2016-07-23T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/07/23/ok-sparks-domestic-science-and-network-resilience
<p><img src="/images/oksparksblogbanner1.gif" width="600" /></p>
<p>I’ve been reflecting and reporting on the <strong>Arts Council England</strong> supported project <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/ok-sparks/">Ok Sparks</a> with <strong>Hwa Young Jung</strong> and <strong>Glenn Boulter</strong>, my major project for the past 2 years. Like all big research led projects they occupy alot of mental space but generate a range of new thinking and drive a huge amount of learning and interestingly, merge with other projects and other practice.</p>
<p>It’s rare to find collaborators that you can work easily with and whose work complements each other but our three part partnership turned out like that. We all decided we would use the project as a context to develop new work and new ways of working for us and eventually it evolved into a new organisation <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a>.</p>
<p>Ok Sparks explored the layers of history of the tenants of <strong>Wray Castle</strong> a victorian folly on Lake Windermere. Built in 1840 by Dr. Dawson, a retired surgeon from Liverpool and his wife, the mock-gothic fantasy castle also featured a walled garden, a church, double boathouse and fernery. <strong>The National Trust</strong> acquired the castle in 1929, and has since been home to the <a href="https://www.fba.org.uk/">Freshwater Biological Association</a>, the <strong>Merchant Navy</strong> to train radio officers as <strong>RMS Wray Castle</strong>, used as a conference centre and is now a family friendly visitor attraction.</p>
<p>Over 2015 - 2016 we developed and programmed a series of activity to explore the lesser known history of a special place in the Lake District with a unique role in the history of science and communication.</p>
<p><img src="/images/oksparksblogbanner2.gif" width="600" /></p>
<h2 id="what-we-made">What We Made</h2>
<p>We pretty much threw everything we were interested in at the project: every tool and methodology at the edge of our capacity, skillset and knowledge. The idea of layers of history and inviting contemporary versions of that history back to the site held it all together: the diversity of the sites history reflected in the content and approach.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Wray Castle Text Adventure</strong> Glenn Boulter</li>
</ul>
<p>A mobile interactive story encouraging young people to explore the castle’s unique architecture and learn about some of it’s former inhabitants. Aimed at younger visitors (5-10), the game centred around a gentle ghost story including some simple freshwater biology and radio operating-themed puzzles. Players were quizzed on details from specific rooms in order to progress through the game</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Ok Sparks! Radio Weekend Event</strong> Ross Dalziel</li>
</ul>
<p>Open weekend reflecting on the past of the Merchant Navy at Wray Castle with Furness Amateur Radio Society (FARS) an active community who recently celebrated 100 years of Amateur Radio in Furness in 2013. Barrow Wireless Association was one of the first amateur radio clubs to be issued with a transmitting licence in the UK, on the 26th June 1913. Visitors experienced a special OFCOM licensed Wray Castle Radio station, call sign GB2WCR, played the Minecraft Treasure Hunt, met
people from the original RMS Wray Castle, the Merchant Navy’s training college, played with morse code and learnt about the continued importance of radio culture in everything from the Internet Of Things, Minecraft and Mountain Rescue.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Easter Class Workshops</strong> Hwa Young Jung</li>
</ul>
<p>An introduction to freshwater biology with scientists from the Freshwater Biological Association. Vistors could Investigate the ecology of the Lakes with hands on activities about chemistry, algae, fish, invertebrates and explored the impact of the lake ecosystem and the role of limnology.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Freshwater Biological Association Reading Room</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>A temporary public reading room of innovative freshwater science publications of the past 30 years of the FBA</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Minecraft Treasure Hunt</strong> Ross Dalziel</li>
</ul>
<p>Special laser cut Minecraft blocks using the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Craft">RF-Craft</a> system were hidden around the castle venue: when found special low power radio modules send a message to a local Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi with an RF-Craft receiver HAT to reveal hidden treasure and information about Wray Castle’s past.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/RF-Craft">RF-Craft</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The unique context of an isolated National Trust venue with no internet access pushed us to design an innovative radio messaging system with <a href="http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk">Patrick Fenner</a> that added network resilience to the distribuiton and installation of the Minecraft Treasure Hunt.</p>
<p>We hope this could have future impact on the development of future interactive/augmented reality games and is a handy bit of hardware that bridges the gap between Raspberry Pi and Arduino on top of the ability to send packets of data over radio.</p>
<p>The basic treasure hunt game was designed to allow families to play and explore the castle together: The younger family members for example could hide the lasercut minecraft block butttons in the castle and then send the ‘grown-ups’ off looking for them while observing a local Minecraft Pi Edition Server in the exhibition room; once the blocks where found and the button pressed the server ( a Raspberry Pi with the RF-Craft HAT in receive mode) would respond by revealing secrets in text
in the games, often teleporting the player to related gaem locations.</p>
<p>It became apparent that much more elaborate iterations of the game could take place as users quickly hit the game’s end as it was designed as a drop-in activity. Much of this part of the project was about the development of a system and tool for developing this kind of game and it became clear that it could trigger hooks and events in text adventures. The power of radio independent of WiFi opened up all kinds of possibilities. The difficulty is finding the right tools
for the job and then the right well documented tools for the job with a thriving community of users of diverse technical ability.</p>
<p>RF-Craft is the most in depth development I’ve ever done to build tools to both serve and distribute elements of my artistic practice, something I first came across with the Owl Project and their <a href="http://muio.org/interface/">Muio</a> system, well before Arduino and maker cultures really got going and before easily accessible documented-for-newbies board culture fully emerged and certainly well before a ‘market’ existed like the one supporting companies like <a href="https://shop.pimoroni.com/">pimoroni</a></p>
<p>This research into what I see as contemporary radio culture, evolved from the hardware hacking, maker and HAM communities, acted as a social bridge to the more traditional radio and telecoms communities the Ok Sparks Open Weekend invited.</p>
<p>Technical people like technical things to discuss so we had strategically built a system that would act as a conversational honeypot so radio people’s technical curiosity merged with game enthusiasts, families and IoT researchers in a fun way.</p>
<p>Together with FACT’s CloudMaker project, we developed an RF-Craft v.2.0 for the use of teachers and other practitioners to teach the internet of things.</p>
<p><img src="/images/tiffins.png" width="300" /></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Tifffin Tin Limited Edition Artworks &amp; Prototype IoT Kit</strong>
We wanted to sell limited edition kits that act as a publication and artefact of our research, and get non-experts started in exploring freshwater science and radio culture. through the Internet Of Things innovatively packaged in a traditional waterproof Tiffin Tin.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>OkSparks! Publications</strong>
Writing with original artwork and found photography by Glenn Boulter, Hwa Young Jung and Ross Dalziel</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>The Wray Castle Board game</strong>
Glenn Boulter developed this game as part of his element of the Tiffin Tin artwork but it was also played with the artists and the public during the 2 weekends in a drop in way. Families in particular enjoyed this game.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="/images/oksparksblogbanner3.gif" width="600" /></p>
<p>All three of us are drawn to lesser known stories and narratives in society &amp; culture; and by culture I don’t just mean art, but technical and scientific cultures aswell. We all feel that the ubiquitous presence of information and technical culture in contemporary society warrants it’s consideration in any kind of artistic engagement, so much of our work engages in technology somehow. By this I don’t mean artists should all be making apps or Processing animations and to abandon traditional craft for 3D printing, but to acknowledge that the default artistic pallette is changing. I tried to look at some of these changes through making a text adventure about <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/walter.html">Walter Benjamin</a>.</p>
<p>The artist with an interest in technical culture has to tread carefully especially when doing it outside the protection of high end art galleries and museums, but in heritage sites with minimal technical infrastructure.</p>
<p>There’s always a danger for artists to simply re-present something from the world of science and engineering and use it to show some kind of speculative danger or profundity. The other danger is that you could become an evangelical maker, science communicator, or a re-seller of microcontrollers. Technology’s increasing colonisation of every part of human life has been described as a form of militarization of culture and there are few practices that allow you to explore this;
or really question how we live in such a society and how we could benefit from it without it allowing others to control us.</p>
<p>For me art is a practice in flux and unclear of it’s role; it’s often seen as an alternative practice, an experimental one or a waste of time; or it’s the only way to learn, be healthy, fix society or promote social cohesion or transcend reality. This lack of clarity opens up more possibilities than say, the mainstream media ever could, and indeed have resolutely failed to achieve. I’d go with it as a form of exploration and reflection, actively resisting the dangerous easy soundbite. Art is more of a dialogue but a critical one that is nuanced and aware of context.</p>
<p>Perhaps a good explanatory story of why an artist is interested in science, which <strong>Hwa Young</strong> pointed out to me, is the history of the term <strong>scientist</strong> which was coined by science historian William Whewell in 1833 in response to comments from members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and then seriously proposed in his <em>Philosophy of The Inductive Sciences</em> in 1840.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist. Thus we might say, that as an Artist is a Musician, Painter, or Poet, a Scientist is a Mathematician, Physicist, or Naturalist.
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>It would be decades before it became common parlance and alongside the establishment of the scientific method and ever more specialised fields or study, art and science increasingly drifted apart when really they’ve always been close and at their heart truly about the study of <em>Natural Philosophy</em></p>
<p><img src="/images/oksparksblogbanner4.gif" width="600" /></p>
<p>Based in a major tourist attraction we wanted to question the prevailing narrative of what the lakes heritage was; it’s worthwhile to tell the story of Beatrix Potter’s time at Wray Castle and indeed her importance to The National Trust; but our role was to reveal a hidden richness of innovation and the open sharing of knowledge through the previous tenants of the Merchant Navy and Freshwater Biological Association, which we only discovered the more we talked to staff and local people. However we wanted to present it as informally and as family friendly as all the existing material at the site already did; so our radio culture trade fair open day was amongst the childrens foam play area and access to a <strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnology">Limnology</a> 101</strong> was a <strong>science meal deal</strong>, freshwater science and tea and cake for £4.50.</p>
<p>And really that’s where <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">domestic science</a> comes in; clearly a reference to what was deemed domestically relevant in the 1970’s and aimed mainly at girls, we wanted to re-think what science and history of science is domestically relevant now. It’s no longer just flour and water ratios for the ideal pudding: it’s internet security and safety playing Minecraft, it’s unearthing your parents memory of text based computer games, or being aware of the tiny animals that live in the rivers running past us as indicators of a healthy ecosystem or the variations in climate that can lead to flooding or understanding webserver infrastructure, the internet of things or how much you can learn by making a board game.</p>
<p>In any report to a funder or your own self-referential blog you must sell the successes of the project and it’s legacy and try to get across the nature of participants experience. Looking at our <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/141473414@N05">photostream</a> goes a way to doing that but capturing conversations we had with hundreds of people over 2 weekends is harder. What we can say is that we developed new ways for us to articulate what our practices really are and then to develop tools that we can use in the future at different places with different histories and presents to reveal.</p>
<p>We have done it in a way that is informed by technology not just because its there and it’s been sold to us but because it reflects the nature of the place and more importantly the people somehow. There is a space for popular science on TV and big names in the cultural canon but it’s equally valuable and part of our hertiage to find off the beaten track tools, like lesser used radio spectra, interactive ficiton, board games and a good old fashioned workshop with microscopes in a pop up lab in a victorian folly to discover and understand <code class="highlighter-rouge">un-popular science</code> and the people who support it across gender, class and nationality.</p>
<p>You can read our individual approaches to each part of the project here; <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/wray-text-adventure/">Glenn’s</a>, <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/fba-easter-class/">Hwa Young’s</a> and <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/cq-cq-this-is-gb2wcr-calling-cq/">mine</a></p>
<p><img src="/images/wraycoaster.jpg" width="600" /></p>
Nature on Github: Technical communities in the landscape2016-03-23T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/03/23/nature-on-github-technical-communities-in-the-landscape
<p><img src="/images/CWWalkerWeb.png" width="600" /></p>
<p>I recently did a talk for <a href="http://www.laurapullig.com/">Laura Pullig</a> and her symposium on Nature and Technology about how some of my recent work has been about technical communities in Nature. Particularly I talked about my research leading up to my work with the collective I co-founded with <strong>Hwa Young Young</strong> and <strong>Glenn Boulter</strong>, <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk">Domestic Science</a> for our <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/ok-sparks">Ok Sparks</a> project. I talked about a few things;</p>
<ul>
<li>Amateur Radio Morse Walkers</li>
<li>ITaaU Mountain Rescue Project</li>
<li>RAYS resilience networks</li>
<li><a href="https://www.lora-alliance.org/">Lora Alliance</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I also talked about <strong>MCQNs</strong> <a href="https://github.com/mcqn/cocklecraft-of-things">CockleCraft-Of-Things</a> and some of these thoughts made their way into <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/cq-cq-this-is-gb2wcr-calling-cq/">my approach to the Ok Sparks! project</a></p>
<p>I think after listening to all the other presenters and their ideas and particularly the many approaches to presenting artworks as DIY kits <strong>Neil Winterburn</strong>, <strong>Laura Pullig</strong> and I have began thinking about <strong>Critical Making</strong>. More on that soon..</p>
<p>You can read the content of the talk <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft/blob/master/resources/Lectures/NatureGit.md">here</a></p>
Affective Touch and Intimate Data2016-02-16T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/02/16/affective-touch-and-intimate-data
<p><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca49o8HW8AAgwgL.jpg" width="600" />
<em>Maker and Mathematician <a href="http://twitter.com/jackie_pease">Jackie Pease</a> having her arm calibrated on the affective touch robot at <a href="http://somaffect.org">LJMU SomAffect Lab</a></em></p>
<p>I’ve been working with Ticky Lowe from <a href="http://www.tickylowe.com/?page_id=16">MakingSense</a> to develop <strong>Social Touch: Intimate Data</strong></p>
<p>The project will build a series of wearable artworks and art experiences to explore the biomedical research area of affective touch and explore new areas of technology based artistic practice through wearable technology and ‘social’ ‘intimate data’ with diverse audiences in diverse contexts.</p>
<p>We live in a world where many people are intimately connected to a mobile computer, the smartphone; sharing our tiniest thought, shopping habit, heart rate or physical movement. What really is intimacy in this world? Have technology driven networks replaced a supportive human touch?</p>
<p>A collaboration between an interdisciplinary group of artists, makers and technologists using Digital art, interaction and wearable technology from the DoESLiverpool Wearables Maker Community and researchers from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU)’s School of Natural Sciences &amp; Psychology lead by Francis McGlone, Professor in Neuroscience at LJMU to explore the research area of affective touch.</p>
<p>The projects core audiences include arts and creative technology/maker audiences from public venue hosts like FACT http://www.fact.co.uk/ and Liverpool MakeFest http://lpoolmakefest.org/ with key selected audiences with autism, learning difficulties and sensory impairments. Audience engagement and the collaboration will be managed by the applying organisation Making Sense supported by industry partners and wider third party supporting organisations like Mencap Liverpool.</p>
<p>Partners involved include Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU)’s School of Natural Sciences &amp; Psychology and The Somatosensory &amp; Affective Neuroscience Group at LJMU, Making Sense, DoES Liverpool, Liverpool Central Library and Make Fest, FACT and Mencap Liverpool.</p>
ArtGym: Critical Spinning Class and Workout tool2016-02-02T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2016/02/02/artgym-critical-spinning-class-and-workout-tool
<p><img src="/images/Walter.png" width="400" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/">TATE Liverpool</a>’s young curator group <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/young-people/gallery-collectives/liverpool">TATECollective</a> came up with the idea of <strong>ArtGym</strong> with <a href="http://www.granbyworkshop.co.uk/">Assemble</a> a curatorial structure to rethink art activity and participation as a workout for general wellbeing. This was opened up to a group of artists in the city to respond with some art making activity. Creative circuit training is a great idea I think so I was reflecting on stuff someone said about their time in Art School despite not actually becoming an artist for a living. They said the biggest thing it gave them was a critical sensibility about both themselves and the world. For me the key thing about contemporary art is this critical thinking, so was really keen for my ‘workout’ to be like an art criticism workout somehow.</p>
<p>I’m no critical theorist (only did 2 years art history and an idiosyncratic reading list of my own) but I think the fact we can think about contemporary art in this way at all owes alot to critical cultures that went before us: what’s considered contemporary art now has often been validated by bleeding edge critical theory of the past. No idea where we are now post-criticism-total-victory-of-corporate-interests but hey thats why we need to work out in the art gym…</p>
<p>Everything from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin">Ruskin</a> to Walter Benjamin’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction">Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berger">John Berger’s</a> materialistic reading of the oil painting canon and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourriaud">Bourriaud’s</a> <strong>Relational Aesthetics</strong> lead to what we do now and reading that stuff led me to making text adventures or organising planespotting conferences and feeling able to call it art…</p>
<p>Of course nobody really needs validation to make art: least of all from Art Critics. I also don’t think you need to do philosophy and politics to be an artist but it doesn’t hurt to be aware of certain kinds of thinking and its always good to put your expression into context and have a wider perspective.</p>
<p>Cultural and social and political backgrounds and archetypes of thinking inform art and we are not as free to express ourselves in the way we may think we are…so a bit of a philosophical workout a critical stretch if you will wouldnt hurt.</p>
<p>But what tool is better suited to an art thinking 101 than Interactive Fiction? After a year developing interactive fiction with <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/">Hwa Young</a>, <a href="http://glennboulter.net/">Glenn Boulter</a> and <a href="http://re-dock.org/tag/liverpool">Re-Dock</a> for <a href="www.textadventuretime.co.uk">Text Adventure Time</a> Ive been exploring how you could use Text Adventures to document an event like <a href="https://github.com/Liverpool-UK/codeforliverpool-stories">Code For Liverpool</a> or some history like this quick game about the <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/Twinery/EdgeHill.html">Rainhill Trials</a> A kind of <code class="highlighter-rouge">interactive non-fiction</code>; more on that soon.</p>
<p>I’ve made a <a href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/WorksOfArt.html">prototype game which imagines a Walter Benjamin Text App</a> in <a href="http://twinery.org">Twine 2</a> and I will be making new games inspired by Art Criticism with young people at the TATE Liverpool <strong>ArtGym</strong> on <strong>Tuesday 22nd March 2016</strong>.</p>
<p>Finally I hope to give the finished games a test run perhaps with a device like <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&amp;page=1&amp;rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aiphone%20exercise%20armband">this</a></p>
Open Electromagnetic Spectra Return to OGGCAMP2015-11-02T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/11/02/open-electromagnetic-spectra-return-to-oggcamp
<p>##OGGCAMP15</p>
<p><img src="/images/OggCamp15Banner.png" width="600" />
<img src="/images/RFCraftatOGG.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>This weekend I tested <strong>RF-Craft</strong> an open hardware (mostly) Radio messaging system for my part of <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/ok-sparks/">OK Sparks!</a> using the unlicensed frequency 868MHz designed and made with <a href="http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/">DefProc</a> as part of <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoES Liverpool’s</a> stand at <a href="http://oggcamp.org/">OGGCAMP15</a>.</p>
<p>RF-Craft is a prototype Raspberry Pi <a href="https://github.com/raspberrypi/hats">HAT</a> (Hardware Attached on Top) and arduino clone to send <code class="highlighter-rouge">mcpi</code> API commands to a minecraft server and especially the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/CloudMaker">CloudMaker</a> server. CloudMaker initiated the project and will be rolling out something similar soon with example resources like <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">this</a> and custom distros like <a href="https://github.com/RPi-Distro/python-sense-hat">this</a></p>
<p>As usual Oggcamp for me was a space for discussing ideas around technology in a social way and I had an interesting discussion with <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/about/">Hwa Young</a> and some Oggcamp big data analytic people about ideas around <code class="highlighter-rouge">Data Literacy</code>, makers re-making sensors and more generally designing <strong>learning</strong> and <strong>thinking</strong> around the <em>internet of things</em></p>
<p>I’ve avoided the term teaching there: I’m not a teacher but an ‘educator’ of sorts: my work is about devising collaboration that involves learning and sharing knowledge. That’s not really a cop out (honest!) it’s just trying to define what I do better. Teachers have a defined role and a clear methodology and real quantifiable outputs. I setup social situations that explore learning in a looser way; the methodology is in flux and dependent on context (people and place) and I hope that forms real but subtle nuanced contextual relationships to knowledge. But that’s then framed as a form of art practice. I see taking part in <a href="http://oggcamp.org/">OGGCAMP15</a> as not just research or networking; it’s more and more part of my practice to support and take part in an informal, sustainable, independent and real knowledge ecosystem.</p>
<p>What I’m essentially excited about is that you learn differently from real people using their knowledge <strong>‘live’</strong>. Being in the place where people are working helps you really become literate in what they ‘know’. The social is a massive part of learning. This is obvious. It’s not about dumbing down to make things easier.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong there is knowledge that can only be developed by sitting down and formerly learning: <strong>ie reading on your own and concentrating</strong> and there is much in culture (educational culture or otherwise) that seems to be trying to obliterate that. I worry sometimes that I’m contributing to this; but trying to make everything more ‘engaging’ and accessible should not necessarily make it ‘easier’. Making &amp; testing to quote @saybeano, ‘all of the things’ is hard and it takes time.</p>
<p>I’m often reminded of <a href="http://blog.marcus-brinkmann.de/">Marcus Brinkmann</a> talking about learning and his PhD; “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done” despite his seeming ease with his knowledge. Learning and making is hard but it’s worth it: and doing that with other people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds helps no end.</p>
<p><img src="http://booktwo.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Post-Atomic-Eyes.001.jpeg" alt="Big Data No Thanks" /></p>
<p>My early use of breadboard arduino water sensors which I showed at the last Oggcamp <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/ShrimpCraft">ShrimpCraft</a> was really a nod to participate in some sort of citizen science and an attempt to learn basic principles of collecting &amp; visualising data and the Internet of Things by making. However reflecting on what I may have learnt since: it was pretty clear I’ve not built much more sophisticated sensors or am doing anything more complex with the data. I’m also not really engaging publishing and doing fascinating complex analyses and critiques of ‘big data’ yet, although one might think that would be the logical extension of an artist and technologist looking at the Internet of Things.</p>
<p>But I am clearer about what data can be and it’s use or <a href="http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/current/showToc">non-use</a> and that there are many assumptions made about collecting data and ‘publishing’ it and so on to ‘teaching’ it. Makes me reflect on the things <a href="http://booktwo.org/notebook/big-data-no-thanks/">James Bridle</a> has written about and the work of people like <a href="https://twitter.com/danlevitin">Daniel J Levitin</a> who pointed out some good <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/multiple-cortical-regions-process-information-0618">links</a> like <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2013/complex-brain-function-depends-on-flexibility-0519">this</a>.</p>
<p>If anything I’m promoting the idea of making <strong>‘small data first’</strong>: and that almost all of my work is about situations that create forms of <code class="highlighter-rouge">literacy</code> or a degree of <code class="highlighter-rouge">comfortable curiosity</code> around a subject like IoT. And I think from simple steps you can point to the more complex. Further, these small steps of literacy is achieved best with the communities and ecologies that inevitably grow around that knowledge and information.</p>
<p>We know there are concerns in education around the digital: creative/design/IoT/big data technical skill-gaps out there and I’d like my projects like <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/CloudMaker">CloudMaker</a>, <a href="http://currently.no">Currently</a>, <a href="https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/wiki/wiki/PublicEngineering">PublicEngineering</a> and even <a href="http://www.textadventuretime.co.uk/">Text Adventure Time</a> to become utilities that address this.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.qth.at/oe7opj/NVIS-Fieldday/nvis_03.jpg" width="600" />
<em>image source qth.at</em></p>
<p>What kicked off this reflective mood was catalysed by meeting Derek &amp; the folks at <a href="www.sadarc.org.uk">Southport &amp; District Amateur Radio Club</a> (SADARC) Amateur Radio group 11 years after meeting them as part of a supporting audio training project I led for <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/">FACT</a> &amp; <a href="http://www.felixkubin.com/?str=radio&amp;id=1250">Felix Kubin</a> in a school in Croxteth.</p>
<p>This was back when I was mostly known for doing and supporting sound based artistic practice with <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk">SoundNetwork</a>. Meeting them again we realised it really made sense to think about the <strong>Ok Sparks!</strong> project with <a href="http://slyrabbit.net/">Hwa Young</a> and <a href="http://glennboulter.net">Glenn Boulter</a> as an opportunity for the public to meet radio communication experts like <a href="http://www.g7lfc.me.uk">Derek</a> and re-think ideas of what <strong>heritage</strong> can be in the Lake District: for every Beatrix Potter story there is one about the history of service and the use of Near Vertical Incidence Skywave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_vertical_incidence_skywave">(NVIS)</a> radio propogation in local mountain rescue.</p>
<p>And after talking about <strong>OK Sparks!</strong>, <strong>SADARC</strong> are going to start meeting at DoESLiverpool next year: and that’s the beauty of ecosystems: they can grow and interconnect. Derek shared his feelings that the club really enjoyed coming to Oggcamp to connect to a wider group of people who they had a perhaps unsurprising kinship with. They’d been watching the emergence of the maker meme for a good while; they were especially interested in the public/family friendly nature of events that were easily as technically specialised as their own.</p>
<p>In many ways they felt that they were the original makers; independent tinkerers and custodians of often open-source technical knowledge put into practice but perhaps forgotten about.
And the social ‘educational’ glue of Oggcamp means a makerspace/co-working space can pull in new people and connect to another long standing knowledge network like <a href="www.sadarc.org.uk">SADARC</a></p>
<p>Taking part and giving time to social things like Oggcamp <a href="https://lpoolmakefest.wordpress.com/">Liverpool MakeFest</a> , <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoESLiverpool</a>; the stuff ‘outside’ of work or formal education, the real social media of people and place, is an essential part of the <code class="highlighter-rouge">literacy</code> I’m interesed in.</p>
<p>We can learn where literacy can take us in the fascinating history of the <strong>Lucas Group</strong> in this documentary taken from <a href="https://medium.com/hidden-sustainability/float-like-a-fab-lab-sting-like-a-honey-bee-4f9eab3b70c1#.sq5s8ae5f">this article</a> @amcewen alerted me to by the <a href="https://medium.com/@stepscentre">STEPS Centre on Medium</a></p>
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0pgQqfpub-c?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>It’s examples like this that make me wonder how we can design learning methods and social ‘systems’ that can develop a <code class="highlighter-rouge">social data-literacy</code> that I think can be found in the <a href="http://doesliverpool.com/slides/future-makespaces-talk-the-dark-matter-of-makerspaces/">Dark Matter of Maker Spaces</a> and at Oggcamp into an approach to address real skill-gaps in a ‘knowledge economy’ at scale.</p>
<p>There are examples out there, the recent reboot of <a href="http://start.shrimping.it/#project">Shrimping.it</a>
and the upcoming <a href="http://codeforliverpool.org/">Code For Liverpool</a> and, like most of the contributors to OGGCAMP to quote @lamdafu <strong>“Improving the world one bit at a time.”</strong></p>
Home is Where the HTML is2015-10-09T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/10/09/home-is-where-the-html-is
<p><img src="http://www.graffitimarkuplanguage.com/images/obama-hello-world.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<h3 id="ive-recently-been-documenting-alot-of-stuff-on-github-but-then-realised-i-was-learning-a-markup-language-on-top-of-the-most-prolific-markup-language-going-html">I’ve recently been documenting alot of stuff on github but then realised I was learning a markup language on top of the most prolific markup language going <code class="highlighter-rouge">html</code></h3>
<p>Maybe it’s my point of entry in learning the underlying tech of the web: I know github markdown more than I know <code class="highlighter-rouge">html</code> is that weird? In feeling a bit paranoid about this I started to look into what Markdown and <code class="highlighter-rouge">Markup language</code> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown">is and where it came from</a> and it made me feel better. It’s all about <strong>Readability</strong></p>
<p>I think I’m drawn to github as its a way of documenting work and developing it all at the same time and it’s to do with laziness; It’s difficult to re-visit projects after the fact and document things at that point: the act of doing being self documented totally appeals.</p>
<p>All work on the web is essentially public and putting privacy issues to one side I wonder about an art practice where all the wrong turns, developments, jokes, serious intents, failures and successes are trackable and versioned on the fly something like @brettlempereur’s <a href="http://icreacharound.xyz/">Icreacharound.xyz</a> but also maybe the idea of self-surveilling your sketchbook or <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/">gitlab</a> for art. It’s a little bit like the <a href="http://e-flux.com/aup/">Agency of Unrealised Projects</a> as a service.</p>
<p>Surveillance and convenience of course go hand in hand; so we accept cookies but getting together your own system of sensibly tagging your bookmarks you like or need is a kind of self-surveillance. Unlike much surveillance we are doing it on our own terms and not having to accept someone elses; so it’s much nicer to use something like <a href="http://pinboard.in">pinboard</a> which gives you quite a bit of independence.</p>
<p>Its also a way of making things more <strong>Readable</strong> I wonder if we put more out there in art practice that is readable and ledgible then we don’t end up with work without context that only people with highly specialised language can understand: then again much of tech culture is about developing highly specialised language and systems and that’s essential and inevitable to <strong>really build things</strong> .</p>
<p>I think alot of what I do is about translating specialist language into a broader cultural language to explore wider connections. The problem is that sometimes you just make work that re-presents science and engineering and other specialist knowledge and art becomes purely about a form of public engagement: it’s a form of translation but it does not have to completely dumb things down.</p>
<p>My work with the Minecraft of Things is about this: translating interesting things in game as a process of understanding; and a way of exposing how understanding and use-value really work in the world. Minecraft has a wide public perception but also has a very specialised community context, so it’s not fully ‘the world’ it’s like a public buffer for it(to re-present a software term).</p>
<p>I’m especially interested in not just <strong>what</strong> I may (or may not, grr <code class="highlighter-rouge">github</code>) have learnt but <strong>how</strong> I’ve learnt technical skills through this process; if I had to learn in a more abstract way all the time then perhaps I would learn nothing.</p>
<p>After working on developing <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/StasisCraft">StasisCraft</a> I’ll finish with two approaches to learning, call it homework if you <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB684ym3QY4">really have time on your hands</a>: something perceived as ‘hard’. No not big data but <strong>Quantum Physics</strong></p>
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OIsPSDOrRus?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hygLNR_wGPo?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>http://qcraft.org/about/</p>
<p>And once you’ve digested that I’d really recommend this presentation by Ron Garret</p>
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dEaecUuEqfc?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p><strong>“Richard Feynman once famously quipped that no one understands quantum mechanics, and popular accounts continue to promulgate the view that QM is an intractable mystery (probably because that helps to sell books). QM is certainly unintuitive, but the idea that no one understands it is far from the truth. In fact, QM is no more difficult to understand than relativity. The problem is that the vast majority of popular accounts of QM are simply flat-out wrong. They are based on the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which has been thoroughly discredited for decades. It turns out that if Copenhagen were true then it would be possible to communicate faster than light, and hence send signals backwards in time. This talk describes an alternative interpretation based on quantum information theory (QIT) which is consistent with current scientific knowledge. It turns out that there is a simple intuition that makes almost all quantum mysteries simply evaporate, and replaces them with an easily understood (albeit strange) insight: measurement and entanglement are the same physical phenomenon, and you don’t really exist.”</strong></p>
Festivals and Fungal Hospitality: Deadwood is not Dead2015-09-18T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/09/18/festivals-and-funghal-hospitality-deadwood-is-not-dead
<h3 id="night-of-the-living-deadwood">Night of the Living Deadwood</h3>
<p><img src="/images/luminoussmall.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p><em>Images by kind permission of <a href="https://twitter.com/BucyLarker">Lucy Barker</a></em></p>
<p>Spent the weekend at <a href="http://www.andfestival.org.uk/events/night-of-the-living-deadwood/">The Night of the Living Deadwood</a> a workshop organised by AND Festival and <a href="https://twitter.com/Sandflyman">Rod Dillon</a>, <strong>Viv Dillon</strong> and <strong>Jackie Parry</strong> exploring the dynamic processes of fungal-tree relationships.</p>
<p>I visited Rod, Jackie and the Micro biology department back in July after applying to the project, to think about how Maker and Hackspace cultures and game cultures like Minecraft could be used as approaches to both public engagement and teaching micro biology and research areas like Biological Computation and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing">Quorum Sensing</a></p>
<h4 id="symbiotic-selfies">Symbiotic Selfies</h4>
<p>We began with a fungal/bacteria microscopy 101 in the Forestry Commission Office of Grizedale Forest and spent the weekend collecting samples and images, worrying about anthropormorphic language and signs, observing 3-way Spore sex, Mycorrhizal fungal networks, meditating, Minecrafting Bacterial hyphae landscapes and walking the Forest hills for mesh networked whistling scultptures.</p>
<p><img src="/images/woodsmall.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<h4 id="our-bodies-are-not-our-own-the-convenience-of-language-in-the-presence-of-god-like-massive-eco-systems">Our bodies are not our own: The convenience of language in the presence of god-like massive eco-systems</h4>
<p>Im always amazed by how thinking of “My Body” and “A Tree” as distinct entities inadequatly describes what we <strong>really</strong> are; vast communities of multi and single cellular autonomous organisms changing communicating and reproducing over millenia and every second that we are alive (or dead).</p>
<h4 id="the-body-and-the-forest-fungal-infrastructure">The body and the forest: Fungal infrastructure</h4>
<p>Slime Moulds are convenient organisms; they are prolific, hardy and easy to inoculate and culture. I liked Jackie Parry’s reply to the question <em>“Why Slime Moulds?”</em>, that it was probably just an easy thing to do and when other scientists saw it they all started using them. So they kind of seem to be like a biological prototyping and testing tool</p>
<h4 id="mapping-cmn-networks-with-bio-luminescent-enzyme-markers">Mapping CMN networks with bio luminescent enzyme markers</h4>
<p>Bio-luminescent bacteria and enzymes make convenient markers</p>
<p>The Rhizomatic Funghal network: The natural vector of these bacteria is in the forest and soil ecosystem: but when Rod showed us a packet of dehydrated funghi he bought on Amazon I wondered how human supply chains and the gardening shopping networks of Amazon and EBay are being used as new vectors for spreading and delivering DNA…</p>
<p><img src="/images/laurasmall.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<h4 id="is-it-useful-to-model-these-networks">Is it useful to model these networks?</h4>
<h3 id="floating-ideas">Floating Ideas</h3>
<p>Check out the <a href="https://micromashup.hackpad.com/">Typepad</a></p>
<p><img src="/images/grizecraft.png" width="600" /></p>
<h4 id="havens">Festivals as Havens</h4>
<p>AND this year felt like a haven for exploring and thinking and making art with technology; but also about making it in the landscape and not just in the city and to deal with different scales. It echoed myself and Markus Brinkmann’s thinking around <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/06/18/publicengineering-is-a-response-to-bochum-in-the/">PublicEngineering</a> of getting away from <strong>Festivals</strong> and <strong>labs</strong> and instead thinking about <strong>havens</strong>, springing from thinking about hackspaces as havens for knowledge and people.</p>
<p>Havens imply more sustained research and exploration and space for reflection/renewal; and to do this it needs time and that’s where festival formats can breakdown; yes they celebrate ongoing work and bring things to focus through an event but sometimes they find it harder to put resources into sustained fostering; in the non-event downtime research can happen and ongoing work can be supported but I cant help thinking that the logistics of the output-focussed costly event
drives us away from a more sustainable ecosystem.</p>
<p>Deadwood was an exploration of how the granular texture of nature communicates; how information is distributed in micro biological systems; there are seasons and general shifts but there are no ‘events’ of particular import. There are no time frames: information moves and evolves but it is not necessarily ‘aware’ of time.</p>
<p>Complex vast communities of organisms like us have evolved to impose narratives on the continuum of biological time perhaps to deal with the consciousness of mortality: it drives us to compete for resources harder maybe and its worked pretty well to make us control much of the planet for better or worse.</p>
<p>But the tiny organisms are still in there; still ticking over relentlessly. Maybe working a bit more like a distributed ecosystem now that we have begun to understand them, is a way forward: the biggest tech powerhouses are disrupting everything through that, so I think art practice and science needs to be leaders in that and not just users
of existing formats.</p>
<p>DeadWood was part of Rod and his department’s ongoing advocacy to open up his science community to diverse art &amp; technical cultures and so its less about festival programming and more about ongoing conversations which feels much more organic. We probably first started talking back in 2010 and we’ve not run headlong into a project together (until recently, more on that soon) as often happens and I think that’s really valuable.</p>
<p>I’m reading into alot here but it’s based on a feeling that events take up so much logistical energy you can end up with barely any time to make work; it’s a problem for many artists like me that spend alot of time initiating projects and having to build contexts for their work where they can so a haven to reflect is essential as much as a strong studio practice.</p>
<p>Removed from the urban context once again makes me feel AND is a portal to a community of artists and technologists reflecting and building something; if we could have more continuous havens, then this can only get better. AND have more recently distributed their work across fields of research and activity and the north geographically so that it is a much looser thing and the festival in many ways is now just an important part of their practice, not it’s reason for existence.</p>
<p>Maybe thats the future of festivals; the festival format should be a tool for a community only, a tool to reveal the workings of havens of activity and ensure they foster &amp; protect creativity not hide it in silos.</p>
<p>For me that’s the magic of things like hackerspaces; quietly making things with the occasional event, maybe, self-sustaining, independent, small but distributed widely, communicating but not necessarily aware of themselves all the time.</p>
<h1 id="day-2">Day 2</h1>
<h2 id="language-problems">Language Problems</h2>
<p><img src="/images/petri.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<h3 id="biosemiotic-detour">Biosemiotic detour</h3>
<p>Started off day 2 getting embroiled in language issues; when we say ‘communicating’ in context of plant life its not quite the same as what we think of in the human world. As a group we started to acknowledge the semiotics of it all but I thought what was important about thinking of that; exactly how are we applying language and whether art is ‘beyond lanuguage’, is an <strong>awareness</strong> of the anthropocentric impulse and likewise the impulse to say <em>‘Oh slime mould is like an arduino or this Mycorrhizal fungi network is like the internet’</em></p>
<p>Clearly theres an area of philosophy to explore here for sure but there’s a danger that if you start to feel a clear philosophical framework is a requirement to give you a space to work in then it’s hard to get anywhere.</p>
<p>Jackie’s thought of a way to think of the difference in thinking of ‘communiciation’: describing a cloud appearing on the horizon as a packet of information you receive and respond to: “Oh its going to Rain”. Although you could receive it as information it does not mean it <strong>has been sent to you</strong> necessarily.</p>
<h4 id="quantum-rna">Quantum RNA</h4>
<p>Ive been reading <strong>Teranesia</strong> by Greg Egan about a viral RNA protein that uses quantum inconsistencies in its structure to mutate and adapt across parrallel quantum histories in time; communicating across genetic timelines. It’s pretty out there but it also contains a surprising sustained rant about the real value to humanity and science of cultural theory and bio-semiotics. I think it has it’s place and it can be important but it also can be put to one side and not always necessary; its another tool. DeadWood felt like all kinds of thinking where welcome when normally specialised disciplines are neatly seperated and can rarely interact.</p>
<h4 id="meditation-cds">Meditation cd’s</h4>
<p>Thiago Hersan talked about making meditation tracks to <strong>feel</strong> the masses of bacterial communication in our bodies and relating it to the forest’s own information super-highway. And then we all took part in a meditation exercise prototype on the floor before learning how to take microscope pictures with Smartphones…</p>
<p><img src="http://40.media.tumblr.com/ea133fc5f4e15ec658005d6de817325c/tumblr_nsbac9IEhz1tytl75o1_400.png" width="300" /></p>
<h2 id="making--looking">Making &amp; Looking</h2>
<p>I made a Pop-Up Minecraft:Pocket Edition server on an Android phone with bacterial microscopy images turned into landscapes you can explore in-game while physically exploring a forest.</p>
<p>I’ve made a <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/DeadWood">DeadWood Repository on GitHub</a> which explains the making side in more detail and includes images from the weekend</p>
<p>I’m going to continue using game culture as a framework for exploring micro biology after discovering that Jackie Parry was making a simulation of Pac-Man with an amoeba, so I hope to collaborate with her on that in exchange for some 3D printed spores…</p>
<ul>
<li>Slow - PacMan: using amoebas and other single/multicellular organisms to simulate classics from Game Culture and challenge a human player to compete with the microscopic cultures that make everything work and without which we would never have made any tools in the first place…</li>
</ul>
Loads Of Midnight2015-09-01T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/09/01/loads-of-midnight
<p><img src="http://www.filfre.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/quill-300x131.jpg" width="300" /></p>
<p>I’ve been working for a good while on the <a href="http://www.textadventuretime.co.uk/about/">TextAdventureTime project</a> with <strong>Hwa Young Jung</strong> and <strong>Glenn Boulter</strong> from <a href="http://re-dock.org/">ReDock</a> for <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/networked-narrative.aspx">Networked Narrative</a>.</p>
<p>When I think of Text Adventure Time I think of many hours late at night in my bedroom 1985-87 working on “Lost in the Supermarket”, a still unfinished text adventure.</p>
<p>I started making text adventures in 1985 because I loved <a href="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/">ZXSpectrum</a> computer games and wanted to make games like the ones I loved. Despite my best mate being able to code and a week of work experience at Ocean Software I just did not have the skillset. But someone made a programme called <a href="http://www.filfre.net/2013/07/the-quill/">The Quill</a> which like Twine, let you make interactive fiction without having to learn machine code.</p>
<p>In many ways the games written with The Quill were like fan fiction versions of the ‘big’ games made by game companies (even though in those days the line between <em>big game companies</em> and <em>a programmer’s bedroom</em> were pretty blurry) there were a huge sub-genre of games that were parodies of games like the Hobbit and Lords of Midnight. Most adventures were po-faced fantasy epics like <strong>Red Moon</strong> so you’d see games purposefully set somewhere boring like <a href="https://archive.org/details/zx_Hampstead_1984_Melbourne_House">Hampstead</a> and were often reactionary satirical and self referential games about Text Adventure culture.</p>
<p>It’s worth reading the article above about <strong>The Quill</strong> the early years of the UK adventure game ‘industry’ to see how far digital culture really has come and Glenn has alread written comprehensively about this. We’ve also looked at text on tv like <strong>Ceefax</strong> and <strong>Teletext</strong> and <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-original-net-artists">this</a></p>
<p><img src="/images/LordsOfMidnight.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>Making Text Adventures was when I first started to make things apart from drawing and looking back some of the things i most remember where games that somehow bled into the real world; often literally.</p>
<p><img src="/images/lenslok.png" width="600" /></p>
<p><img src="/images/lenslok2small.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>I was obsessed with packaging or new game systems, notably Lords Of Midnight which had a special keyboard overlay as there were so many control keys, not to mention anti-piracy gadgets like the lenslok which you can see above. Almost all of these examples were often elaborate attempts to stop piracy.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-adverts/w/WhamTheMusicBox.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>Some games tried and failed to get major and minor pop star involvement and place their game in pop culture to arguable degrees of success, <strong>Everyone’s A Wally</strong> had a specially commissioned soundtrack you played that meant you could rewind the tape ready for the next game load by listening to a (very bad) soundtrack by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Berry_%28actor%29">Mike Berry</a> famous for his performance of the <strong>Blue Ribband</strong> chocolate bar theme tune and starring in <strong>Are You Being Served</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>Wham: The Music Box</strong> was endorsed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wham!">Wham</a> an early music sequencer the highlight of which was the <strong>Whampiler</strong> a programming joke about non-interpreted computer language: I loved the idea of a ridiculous pop band being reduced to machine code but writing a special compiler to turn it back into pop music.</p>
<p>Like Glenn, I started looking for other physical game add-ons but they are all a little bit dissappointing: I do love <a href="http://www.oldgames.sk/docs/Dial-A-Pirate/">Dial-A-Pirate</a> is pretty good: click on the link and see if you can make a pirate who looks like Kanye West.</p>
<p><img src="/images/DialAPirate.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>I love Hwa Young’s idea of us starting to make <strong>Art-E-Fakes</strong> and <strong>Feelies</strong> from the worlds we are creating in <a href="http://twinery.org/">Twine</a> and I will be working with you all to do this through a process of co-design: ie designing things together.</p>
<p>Instead of things directly <em>needed</em> by the game to play I think we can make arte-fakes that are maybe oblique consequences of the games we’ve made. The best example Glenn blogged about from the “Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy” was the ‘microscopic spacefleet’ ie an empty plastic bag.</p>
<p><img src="/images/emoji-gloves.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>So from the Hull group I’ve made:</p>
<ul>
<li>Fake ID cards for the fictional ‘FutureGen’ company and used the typeface from an existing company with fake ‘bio-metric’ scanners:</li>
<li><strong>ie</strong> a blue LED connected to a battery.</li>
<li>Emoji-Gloves - a secret communication system based on the ancient use of emoji <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language">Markup language</a> on the now defunct android mobile operating system “Blue Ribband 6.0”</li>
<li><strong>ie</strong> lasercut emoji symbols that can be velcroed onto handling gloves from <a href="http://www.toolstation.com/">Toolstation</a></li>
</ul>
<p><img src="/images/codesignhull1.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>Other Ideas we came up with in Hull:</p>
<ul>
<li>AiReader - a swipeable electronic book like an IPad</li>
<li>Barcode Tattoos</li>
<li>Education Centre Pencil Case</li>
<li>Fake future or contemporary books fake - ‘aged’</li>
<li>School Badge for the sinister Education Centre</li>
<li>Sacred box for revered artefact for pre-incident culture <strong>Dan &amp; Phil’s</strong> <em>The Amazing Book is Not On Fire</em></li>
</ul>
<p>Imagine in the future someone becomes obsessed with our games and what would the super-fans of our games make in tribute?</p>
Full Of Noises2015-08-19T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/08/19/full-of-noises
<p><img src="/images/boomstand.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<h2 id="full-of-noises">Full Of Noises</h2>
<p>Spent a great weekend at <a href="http://fonfestival.org/">Full Of Noises</a> with the <a href="https://twitter.com/weareboomstand">Boomstand</a> crew connecting the Barrow-in-Furness Park bandstand to local passersby’s Bluetooth devices. Everything from 10cc, Sonic Youth and a mini festival of Donk was connected up despite dodgy weather. It was the first public test for the winning idea from <a href="http://bringandbyte.co.uk/">Bring &amp; Byte</a> the music hack weekend I curated with <a href="http://thehubuk.com/">The Hub UK</a>.</p>
<p>It showed the public enthusiasm for playing their own music in a place they thought they knew well and I think for a festival like Full Of Noises who put on high quality intrnational, challenging sound and music based art that’s accessible to all it was a valuable public test. The idea of a self-managing online calendar and system to negotiate the use of a traditional public space for music is a great one and we had many interesting chats with locals and Ken the park keeper about managing and using the park and the tensions that can arise. It also has great potential for festival artists experimentation with audiences and the public.</p>
<p>The young people who passed by were incredibly excited to play their own music but you could see that the bangin’ hard house of Donk was not everyones cup of tea and immeadiately would set off the tensions often played out in public parks; older people sharing space with the very young and often very bored getting into trouble. Talking to them they were well up for using it but less keen on the control element or limited sessions obviously but were happy to drift off at the end of their session and come back later.</p>
<p>It looked like people more into music could potentially dominate everything but the whole idea is that the more people who use it the more its self curated. If we were in the park under normal circumstances we’d be pretty unlikely to talk to the group of ‘Donkers’: there is always an inescapable us and them at play; but because we had to take turns playing our music and theirs we were forced to engage to a degree; but the system meant that nobody was fully in control and I think that sort of ‘flattening’ of the us and them dynamic can only be a good thing and help people talk to each other about using their public spaces.</p>
<p>Clearly it could all devolve into a free form rave and possibly suddenly ended rave sessions with people in party mode could well set off potential problems for Ken and his team, but given enough diversity of users and ownership it could well be one of the most interesting public music engagement initiatives around.</p>
<p>The folks behind FON Festival <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/">Octopus Collective</a> have always been keen to place music and sound not just to specialist audiences but to the public in both Barrow and Cumbria and engage with their local context through really successful public events in Barrow Park. They commissioned my own <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/?q=node/453">Crazy Golf Hack</a> for SoundNetwork and in many ways their support still has an impact and legacy for my work today. Be interesting to see who else is up for hosting a Boomstand and maybe Barrow should be the first place to have a permanent install which could mean Octopus projects like <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/fon-air/">FON Air</a> could be playing in the park remotely at any time…</p>
<p>You can see images from the amazing festival <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/octopuscollective/albums/72157657192094781">here</a> the sights and sounds of which still resonating in my head weeks after. A truly unique festival in a great part of the world.</p>
The Science button2015-07-27T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/07/27/the-science-button
<p><img src="/images/sciencebutton.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<h3 id="bookmarking-reality-with-the-science-button">Bookmarking Reality with The Science Button</h3>
<p>I met Don Cruickshank at Southampton University who told me about how he manages all the university labs data that are hooked up with a range of sensors connected to the internet. They were there to help verifing the starting and ending conditions of experiments so data like humidity, temperature and workbench movement where all available as live data. One of his researchers wanted a ‘Science’ button.</p>
<p>The button was a departmental joke: a big red button with ‘science’ written on it when pressed just placed a marker in the lab sensor metrics timeline that you might want to ‘do science on’ ie verify conditions on later. I think the simplicity of that concept would be a good starting point a simple IoT product; a generic button for <strong>bookmarking reality</strong>.</p>
<p>All science is at heart testing simple things and then building up and testing more complex inferences</p>
Myths of Redistributed Manufacture2015-07-20T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/07/20/myths-of-redistributed-manufacture
<h2 id="future-makespaces-in-redistributed-manufacturing-symposium">Future Makespaces in Redistributed Manufacturing Symposium</h2>
<p><img src="/images/minelucky.png" width="600" /></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/FMs_RdM">@FMs_RdM</a></p>
<p>I’m at an <a href="http://futuremakespaces.rca.ac.uk/">RCA</a> symposium exploring <strong>“Future Makespaces in Redistributed Manufacturing”</strong> I’ve been following and indeed taking part and promoting the harnassing of emerging and established ‘maker’ communities and related ‘enthusiasts’ in the cultural sphere. With the growth of information/’tech’ culture it’s no surprise that we are now looking at how Makerspace/Hackspace culture could affect the means of production at scale.</p>
<p>For me it follows on from moving into <a href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoESLiverpool</a>, my <a href="http://wiki.doesliverpool.com/PublicEngineering">PublicEngineering project</a> and research like the great <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/UK-makerspaces/dataset">NESTA makerspace mapping</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/Freerange_Inc">Hannah Stewart</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/hwayoung">@hwayoung’s</a> exploration of <strong>‘the maker belt’</strong> alongside the continuing trend for cultural hackathons which I recently tried my hand at for the <a href="http://thehubuk.com/">The Hub UK</a> with <a href="http://bringandbyte.co.uk">Bring&amp;Byte</a>.</p>
<p>These are my notes on the speakers and thought exercises.</p>
<p>5 million RaspPI have been sold and some 10K Arduino’s a month are sold (no ref on this)</p>
<p>How will this plateau out and impact on the future of invention: there is a surface tier that is extremely wide and broad and then a lesser known clowdy dark matter tier.</p>
<h4 id="are-there-suspect-motives-behind-utilising-maker-ness">Are there suspect motives behind Utilising Maker-ness?</h4>
<h4 id="barcelona-makerspace-example">Barcelona makerspace example:</h4>
<p>Tensions between the ‘community’ and what funders want</p>
<p>Case by case is important</p>
<h3 id="maintaining-diversity">Maintaining diversity</h3>
<p><img src="/images/AntiqueSmallEngineClub.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>Every year I go to <a href="http://www.northwestvintagerally.co.uk/">North West Vintage Rally</a> and use it as my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_candle">‘standard candle’</a> for festival style engagement: there’s everything from Dog shows to Fairground Organs to 2-stroke engine clubs. I think it’s a good model because</p>
<ul>
<li>No overt conceptual framework</li>
<li>Guaranteed family friendly crowds</li>
<li>Strong and diverse community (although pretty older white male)</li>
<li>Fairly off-trend enthusiasms</li>
<li>People who visit have an intuitive sense of the value of exhibitions</li>
<li>Randomly mixed with old school fairground caller C.R.E.A.M (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)</li>
<li>Channeling Fred Dibner, Maker Faire and The Antiques Road Show</li>
<li><a href="http://www.normansorgans.co.uk/">Norman’s Organs</a></li>
<li>Resilient yet still part funded by Halton Borough Council</li>
<li>Dogs towing carts</li>
</ul>
<p>I’m only referring to this to make sure in our analysis and mapping and utilisation feasibility studying we don’t forget the random spirit of creativity and making without clear aims and objectives that is the real fountain of the technical culture. Another form of Dark Matter surely…</p>
<h3 id="dark-matter-of-maker-spaces">Dark Matter of Maker Spaces</h3>
<h4 id="clumping">Clumping</h4>
<p>Are makerspaces really designed? Should they be? Relationships to hackerspace culture</p>
<p><img src="http://www.strelka.com/img/f1e7b70bcb50ba96/sp-series-1-covers-rgb-5.jpg" width="300" /></p>
<p><em>“Dark Matter and Trojan Horses”</em> <strong>Dan Hill</strong> <a href="http://www.strelka.com/en/press/books/dark-matter-and-trojan-horses-a-strategic-design-vocabulary">Available Here</a></p>
<p>Applying software development models into the real world a <code class="highlighter-rouge">git push origin master</code> for reality</p>
<p>We want to Redistibute Manufacturing but we dont want to <strong>run</strong> redistributed manufacture in the NorthWest</p>
<p>Support the community not absorb or control it.</p>
<p>Access and sector the Dark Matter of Venn Diagrams</p>
<h4 id="there-is-no-easy-win-to-dark-matter-issues">There is no easy win to dark matter issues;</h4>
<p>The main thing about it is we cant see it easily that’s why we use the metaphor:
Dangers are cultural gestures and cultural visibility…</p>
<p><img src="http://www.exploringthenorth.com/cornish/pump1.gif" width="300" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Treatise-The-Cornish-Pumping-Engine/dp/1247338525?tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-20">A Treatise On The Cornish Pumping Engine</a></p>
<h3 id="can-we-really-scale">Can we really scale?</h3>
<p>Reproducing the Dark Matter status quo’s what are the structural battoning going on</p>
<h3 id="stories">Stories</h3>
<p>DasLabor</p>
<p>Antique small engine club</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ccc.de/en/">Chaos Computing Club</a></p>
<h3 id="ragworm">Ragworm</h3>
<p>Diversity of customers from OGGCAMP2013 to now.</p>
<p>Glynn Hudson Wales</p>
<p>Hiding Manufacturing from the Makerspaces to engage What is local?</p>
<p>Sounds like we need established manufacturing services in order for them to run the smaller manufacturing models that allows people to order 10 circuit boards.</p>
<p>Need high volume to float the low volume and bespoke.</p>
<p>Allow a smaller business model to exist within a bigger one</p>
<h2 id="good--bad">Good &amp; Bad</h2>
<h3 id="ethics-of-home-manufacturing-and-maker-movements-in-the-home-who-will-ruthlessly-exploit-the-material-of-maker-ness">Ethics of home manufacturing and “Maker Movements in the home” Who will ruthlessly exploit the <em>material</em> of ‘Maker-ness’</h3>
<h3 id="reverse-engineering-the-gulf-stream">Reverse Engineering the Gulf Stream</h3>
<p>Open Knowledge versus ‘new transacitional methodologies’</p>
<p>Andiamo</p>
<p>Service designers</p>
<p>“develop orthotics for people within 1 week globally”</p>
<p>Naveed looking at software to enable printing of orthotics</p>
<p>Demand and capacity gaps and clinical evidence gap</p>
<p><strong>Industrial led culture leads and inhibits/inhabits everything</strong></p>
<h3 id="half-cut-stack-is-thinking-about-the-full-stack-important-here">Half-Cut Stack: is thinking about ‘the Full Stack’ important here?…</h3>
<p><em>Influencing the stack and standards committees</em></p>
<p>Material science in additive manufacturing is very poor… FDA in America is still the main regulator
Service Design is poor: Look at OnShape</p>
<p>Empathy can create radical disruption</p>
<p>Danger of throwing hyped tech and methodologies at things.</p>
<p>###UK Maker Belt Association</p>
<p><img src="http://oomlout.com/UKMBA/Association/logo/UKMBA-logo_1500.png" width="300" /></p>
<p>Pallet Enterprise and the Young Gun Antiquists
Andrew Back of <a href="http://oshug.org/">OSHUG</a></p>
<p><a href="http://makerbelt.org.uk/">UKMBA</a>
Origin of <a href="https://github.com/DefProc/mfuklc">UKMBA Laser Challenge</a> and featuring dirtycircuits boards for impact sensors.
Demystifying the industrial estate
<a href="http://outgrow.me/">Outgrow.me</a></p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/oomlout/oomlout-OOBB">OOBB</a></p>
<p>The journey &amp; narrative of the various manufacturing tiers…</p>
<p>NRI innovation research
Not individuals at all its multi disciplinary teams distributed non-linear
The Cox Review
<code class="highlighter-rouge">STEM &gt;&gt; STEAM</code></p>
<p>Go in for one thing and have completely unrelated inspiring conversation about something else</p>
<p>What is an innovation space? Experience of being approached by 2 designers in MakerFaire about how to design stuff; I just gave completely conflicting advice! Wanting your cake and eating it but also cooking it and assembling the cooker element.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/res/resources/HE-BCIS/index.htm">HEBCIS</a>
REC Research Excellence C</p>
<p>Social returns…the single front door…</p>
<h2 id="diverse-critical-bolt-holes-for-innovation-and-play">Diverse Critical Bolt holes for innovation and play</h2>
<p>The whole day made me think on <a href="http://blog.marcus-brinkmann.de/">Markus Brinkmann’s</a> idea of hackerspaces as <strong>Havens</strong> for people and knowledge from our <a href="http://wiki.doesliverpool.com/PublicEngineering">PublicEngineering Project</a> which I blogged about <a href="http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/06/18/publicengineering-is-a-response-to-bochum-in-the/">here</a></p>
<p>Essentially rather than utilise and harness the makespace it’s more about distributing some of the methods and madness and growing them in sustainable bubbles that may have all kinds of different organisational structures. But rather than make them too big (See Article on <a href="http://www.smarturbanism.org.uk/wherever-something-is-wrong-something-is-too-big/">Leopole Kohr</a> make them truly diverse.</p>
<p>See <a href="https://medium.com/hidden-sustainability/float-like-a-fab-lab-sting-like-a-honey-bee-4f9eab3b70c1">this article via McFilter</a> to realise that the Future Makespaces project could look at some similar community technology meets industrial culture pasts like the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=10&amp;v=0pgQqfpub-c">Lucas Plan</a> as always excellent internet filtering by <a href="http://www.mcqn.net/mcfilter/">McFilter</a> not to be confused with <a href="http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/mcfilter/">MCFilter</a></p>
<p>Critical of over-hype in co-design but clearly we are all really focussed on Co-Designing with families
Critical of imagination without restraint but then focussed on imagination?
Critical of gestural provocations but then always bringing it back to one</p>
<p>###References</p>
<p>Lunar society Watt / Murdoch /</p>
<p><a href="http://asecc.com/data/outboard.html">Antique Small Engine Collectors Club</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.northwestvintagerally.co.uk/">North West Vintage Rally</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.das-labor.org/?lang=en">DasLabor</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2009/events/c4-openchaos">Open Chaos</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wutheringbytes.com/">Wuthering Bytes</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.schauspielhausbochum.de/spielplan/2014-06/public-engineering/833/">PublicEngineering Bochum</a></p>
<p><a href="http://wiki.doesliverpool.com/PublicEngineering">PublicEngineering Liverpool</a></p>
ITaaU Community Conference2015-07-06T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/07/06/itaau-conference
<p><img src="/tumblr_files/Cloudmaker.png" width="600" alt="CloudMaker Logo" /></p>
<p>The past 2 days I’ve been at the ITaaU Network Community Conference in Southampton University which is the network that supported the <a href="/2014/03/13/minecraftofthings">CloudMaker</a> Project I worked on with Dr Mark Wright FACT Lecturer at LJMU. It’s been fascinating to put the project in context of the other supported projects and what’s struck me is that every project really seems to focus and impact on the social side of utility. Each take on utility engages directly with a form of social change and seems to be really about making academia and research connect to the real world.</p>
<p>###The problem with platforms is that it’s difficult to get off them</p>
<p>Why make Platforms as Service (PaaS) cloud services when we can use the internet? At scale it becomes useful and means you dont have to manage your own infrastructure.</p>
<p>###Blogjects</p>
<p>Like the idea of publishing addressable real-world objects that become programmable and act like objects in programming.</p>
<p>###Lightning Project Talks</p>
<p><strong>Andy Stanford-Clarke</strong> took us on a tour of IoT services current cost, EasyRadio, Xively, IBMmBed, Current care</p>
<p>CurrentCare is Current Cost’s foray into home automation: it made me reflect on my use of Current Cost for my user testing of Matt Venn’s <a href="/2015/02/22/energywristband1">EnergyWristband</a> project</p>
<p>ARM mbed IoT starter kit
IBM Bluemix, Boilerplates</p>
<p><strong>Radius of risk</strong> The more data gets away from us then the more risky it becomes… is all data meaningful to others.. What is the risk of a school air quality to a hacker or marketeer</p>
<p>What is the impact of data protection in Cloudmaker?</p>
<p><img src="/tumblr_files/tallysticks.jpg" alt="Jolly tally sticks" /></p>
<p>###Phil Godsiff</p>
<p>Can an Anonomous group be a community?</p>
<p><a href="http://maidsafe.net/">Maidsafe</a></p>
<p>What is the blockchain? Can it sort out all the trust issues people are talking about?</p>
<p>###Open Data Institute</p>
<p>Overview of what the ODI do:</p>
<p><a href="https://pinboard.in/u:cheapjack/t:ITaaU/t:opendata">Useful links from OpenDataInstitute talks</a></p>
<p>Who is monitoring the financial impact/build around the data they use?</p>
<p>###Paul Watson</p>
<p>What is the cloud? Looking at the infrastructure of the cloud</p>
<p>Illusion of <strong>infinite</strong> computing resources on demand</p>
<p>Tracking the cloud, platforms and digital inclusion</p>
<p><a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/article/minecrab-play-minecraft-for-the-good-of-your-enterprise/">Testing the cloud with minecraft</a></p>
<p>###Pat Langdon</p>
<p>Resilience of connectivity in geographically isolated Upland areas. Was pleased to tell Paul about Glenn Boulter’s Minecraft LAN partys at the Coniston Institute and thinking about game connectivity in isolated rural uplands. There’s a real connection here I think to our Public Investigations project.</p>
<p>###LED atmospheric haze measuring for Air Quality</p>
<p>Using peoples own devices to monitor haze levels</p>
<p>###Mapping Food Banks</p>
<p>Mapping food bank data to visualise social impact and alert issues
Imagined mapping this data from <a href="http://mappingforchange.org.uk/">Mapping For Change</a> into minecraft like the Ordnance Survey Server.</p>
<p>###3d scanning Elgin</p>
<p>Interesting use of rurally isolated point cloud data. Good to talk about some of the issues around cleaning the noise of laser scanned data.</p>
<p>###With Great Power comes great responsibility</p>
<p>Trust issues in IoT seems to be a theme looming over us; the beauty of this network’s work is the connections to the social; utility impacts on people in a powerful way and as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben says this makes the ethics and ethos around the use of people’s data a big thing.</p>
<p>###The Pubchain</p>
<p>Can the Blockchain really help security and trust?</p>
<p>“Can you really trust the blockchain?”
“I guess you can the cryptography means you don’t need to trust it”
“Do you <strong>really</strong> trust it though?”</p>
<p>People talking about bitcoin and the blockchain in the pub. Mark Wright’s idea of a 2way ledger for exchange based on royalties for artists. How would that work and why did something like this not pop up at <a href="http://bringandbyte.co.uk/">Bring &amp; Byte</a></p>
<p>I like the idea or the itaau as a currency.</p>
<p>###We are the data</p>
<p>The crowd is not a utility? Is a totally open call the right approach to crowdsourcing? <strong>crowdsourcing needs to be curated</strong> Maybe a utility is <strong>sourcing</strong> the <strong>crowd</strong> in an enabling way.</p>
<p><code class="highlighter-rouge">Owners &gt; Aggregators &gt; Consumers</code></p>
<p><code class="highlighter-rouge">Village Leaders &gt; Hunters &gt; Gatherers &gt;</code></p>
<p><code class="highlighter-rouge">Hunters &gt; Gatherers &gt; Gatherers &gt;</code></p>
<p>Making Socio-technical systems to build a community.
CrowdProjects &amp; Directories
<a href="http://www.crowdsourcing.org/">Crowdsourcing.org</a>
<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a>
<a href="http://streetbump.org">StreetBump</a> Implicit micro tasking. Interesting how they also set up a innovation competition. That’s more <strong>sourcing</strong> of the crowd to find the crowd yourself
<a href="https://www.mysociety.org/report-street-problems/">Fix My Street</a>
<a href="PGDP.net">Distributed Proofreaders</a> Mechanical Turk</p>
<p>In crowdsourcing, it’s easy to forget that People can do very complex tasks: much more complex than the microtasking model: Maybe in the crowdsourcing design space it’s important to make room for complexity.</p>
<p>Crowdsourcing with Minecraft and fear of the crowd.</p>
<p>###Clinical Coal Face: You’re Dead! <code class="highlighter-rouge">Achievement Unlocked</code></p>
<p>Issues around the lack of end user resaerch and UX exploration in NHS IT services led to some interesting work in making patient focussed ‘Lifelines’ with meta-data so that a patient history was easy to see</p>
<p>This becomes a life ‘track’; or a LifeLine. Looking at a graph of raw NHS records: if you’re red you’re dead and your record is complete: if you’re green you’re alive and well: yellow you’re file is starting up but not complete: you are ‘just’ ill..</p>
<p><img src="/images/RestfulRangers.jpg" width="600" /></p>
<p>###Restful Rangers and the library bus</p>
<p>#####Havens for knowledge</p>
<p>Our working group came up with planning on finding Experimental spaces for exploring knowledge access, curation and producion between the models of makerspaces and libraries</p>
<p>Risks of libraries becoming aggregators. Trust issues
Importance of quiet spaces</p>
<p><strong>STEM crises</strong></p>
<p>Technology is increasingly commoditised and ubiquitous; #itaau looking at the wider societal impacts of tech and innovation. Its about patterns; nothing new but new <strong>translation pipes</strong></p>
<p>#####We didnt know what we needed to know</p>
<p>Places People and Processes are we getting too focused on these</p>
<p><strong>Spaces</strong> are not <em>smart</em> <strong>people</strong> are; but <em>smart</em> spaces help them</p>
<p>Metcalfe’s law</p>
<p>###Data is a Bland Word
What is <strong>significant data</strong>? What is a data scientist? People seem to use it as a shorthand for needing somebody with knowledge of how to deal with data in a useful or interesting way, which seems to go back to the need for Restful Rangers people who can help us structure data in a useful, searchable way.</p>
<p>Don Cruickshank - MUD player and PDF scraper and inventor of the SCIENCE button</p>
DesktopProsthetics2015-06-20T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/06/20/desktopprosthetics
<p><img src="/tumblr_files/DesktopProsthetics.png" alt="image" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/build-your-own-tools-for-sharing/doesliverpool-ross-dalziel-patrick-fenner-and-adrian-mcewen-uk-desktop-prosthetics-2015.aspx">Desktop Prosthetics</a> is a project I’ve been working on with <a href="https://twitter.com/amcewen">Adrian McEwen</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/defproc">Patrick Fenner</a> fellow permanent deskers at <a href="http://doesliverpool.com" title="DoESLiverpool's Homepage">DoESLiverpool</a> to develop an iteration of the <a href="http://enablingthefuture.org/upper-limb-prosthetics/the-raptor-hand/" title="Enabling The Future Website">Enabling the Future</a> project within the <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/build-your-own-tools-for-sharing.aspx">Build Your Own Show</a> at <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk">FACT</a> with <a href="http://www.reach.org.uk/">Reach</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/craftscounciluk">CraftsCouncilUK</a></p>
<p>DoESLiverpool is a community of makers and entrepreneurs in Liverpool, with a Co-Working space where I’m based, Workshop and Event Hub. It’s a place to work, learn, share ideas, form groups and make things the way you want to for small fees or initially, cake.</p>
<p>We’ve been project managing and open sourcing the project on <a href="https:github.com/cheapjack/buildyourown">github here</a> so that the project infrastructure itself explores contemporary tools for sharing code, information and knowledge.</p>
<p>The 3 of us and DoES will be lead creative technologists helping setup, facilitate and support a ‘production line’ area for Build Your Own introducing the idea of 3D printing open source designs of upper limb prosthetics. It’s inspired by <a href="http://bionicbaylee.com/">BionicBailey</a> a local family who used DoESLiverpool’s workshop to print hand parts independently and are now local experts in Raptor hand making!</p>
<p>Over the course of the exhibition we will be testing and building 3D printed prosthetic devices. The public will have the opportunity to play, experiment and understand what prosthetics are and how access to rapid prototyping and open source digital making tools can help people make the world the way they want it.</p>
<p>I think the key to this project is that it’s an entry point into the culture of sharing technical knowledge in the networked society and it’s a way of learning about science and engineering on a practical level and it also engages with ideas around the <strong>social model of disability</strong>: <em>People are not disabled, society makes them disabled because it’s not built well enough.</em> It’s a way of really exploring the design process and the reality of 3Dprinting beyond the hyperbole of the media.</p>
Cubs Radio2015-03-31T16:45:47+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/03/31/great-evening-yesterday-helping-garston-park<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_nm3j4buLcT1r2ybsso1_r1_400.png"width=400><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_nm3j4buLcT1r2ybsso2_r1_1280.jpg" width=400 ><br><br/><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zz-be-cAqws" frameborder="0"></iframe><br><br>
Great evening yesterday helping <strong>Garston Park Beavers</strong> learn morse code toward their communication badge. We started off demo'ing a simple Arduino AM radio transmitter which broadcast morse bursts at 1237KHz which we picked up on a cardboard FM radio. <p>We used some code from this <a href="http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=8456.0">forum post</a> by AnyMouse and incorporated a morse translator over Serial from here.</p>
<p>You can get the <a href="https://github.com/cheapjack/cubsradio">code and resources we used on github</a></p><br/><pre class="prettyprint">
/*
Code Compiled from a trawl of forums like
<a href="http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,36729.0.html">http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,36729.0.html</a>
<a href="http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=8456.0">http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=8456.0</a>
uses the PORTB variable to create a frequency of up to 4MHz
listenable on analogue AM/FM radios
*/
</pre>
Energy Wristband2015-02-22T16:42:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2015/02/22/energywristband1<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_nk70a9PXSf1r2ybsso1_540.jpg"/><br/><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_nk70a9PXSf1r2ybsso2_540.jpg"/><br/><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_nk70a9PXSf1r2ybsso3_540.jpg"/><br/><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_nk70a9PXSf1r2ybsso4_1280.png"/><br/><br/><p>Had nice half term project testing the awesome <a href="http://www.mattvenn.net/">Matt Venn</a>&rsquo;s <a href="https://github.com/mattvenn/energy-wristband">Energy Wristband</a> project. I’ve wanted to do domestic current monitoring for ages ever since hearing about <a>Adrian McEwen</a>&rsquo;s adventures back in 2008 but was too scared to start messing with mains until realising you dont need any invasive sensing at all and can use something like <a href="http://www.currentcost.com/products.html">Current Cost</a>. <br/></p><p>I love this project as it’s all about family engagement with data and a bit of a theme of mine is making sensors and data physically tangible to aid the understanding of abstracted information. Even if you ‘know’ you may be using too much energy it does not really modify behaviour and even a graph that show you definately ARE still is not enough. <br/></p><p>I&rsquo;m really interested in the way Matt’s thought about flipping ‘pester power’ but also trying to literally ‘feel’ data with a wrist worn rumble pack: and then worn by your kids and siblings amplifies the pest element! Anyway much half term fun had running around turning off lights constantly and working out how much making a fried breakfaast really costs esp if you use the oven aswell as a frying pan…</p><p>Despite my 2 lads now feeling smugly energy conscious it’s funny how the energy spikes of FIFA15 on xbox still go unheeded… The arcade game Joust (actually my youngest’s fave game we play together) running on a MAME emulator on the pi draws way less power; but well I can’t seem to argue a switch to this game platform to save money without making a proper arcade cabinet…</p><p>It will be interesting how multiple wristbands could work in a workshop setting.<br/></p>
ShrimpCraft!2014-08-02T08:45:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/08/02/shrimpcraft-tools-for-the-water-curious<p><img alt="image" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-tEXZztWXXV4/U8RCXEcl5FI/AAAAAAAAEJQ/AmfHPUifHjY/w929-h522-no/IMG_20140711_145639518_HDR.jpg" width="500"/></p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve been working with <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/" target="_blank">Octopus Collective</a> and <a href="http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/" target="_blank">Natural England</a> to develop a project exploring Walney Island with Year 6 children from North Walney Primary School. It has developed from research with the <a href="http://currently.no" target="_blank">Currently</a> project which aims to get people to engage with the marine world in new ways across different disciplines from sailing, soap making and computer science.<br/><br/>Our approach was for the group to become co-researchers and assemble simple water sensors based on the Arduino platform and use them to explore their environment. As a school on an island the sea and Walney channel is a big part of their world. It would be an opportunity to build and test kits that the school and other schools in the area could use in the future and a way of building on some of the DIY electronics work Octopus have been pioneering in Barrow in Furness based in Piel View House in Barrow Park.</p>
<p><img alt="image" src="https://31.media.tumblr.com/0b8748002b84300ddecd580438ec733c/tumblr_inline_n9olne3Aco1qa02bl.png"/></p>
<p>We used <a href="http://shrimping.it" title="Shrimping website" target="_blank">shrimping.it</a> to buy <a href="http://shrimping.it/blog/kits/" title="Kits">&lsquo;shrimp core&rsquo; kits</a> with Persistence Of Vision extender kits. Shrimping sell cheap kits and distribute free information on how to build Arduino compatible breadboards for prototyping: they are based locally in Morecambe (hence shrimp) and are all about getting people involved in making more accessible tools; to not just be consumers and be given tools but understand how to build them. You feel more connected to something you have built from components rather than just given a pre built Arduino. It also brings the kit cost down to £10 to make it an affordable project for a class to do. <br/><br/>The school is on an island so like much of Barrow there are strong links to the sea and we wanted to engage children with this environment through collecting artefacts; beachcombing basically, images and also collecting sound and editing together simple soundscapes. For my part of the project we wanted to connect to what you cant see or hear: the underlying data of the environment; what could a computer science take be on exploring the natural world? <br/><br/>I wanted the children to build their own 'computers&rsquo; and sensors and then visualise the data using simple LEDs flashing on the breadboard, a simple <a href="https://www.processing.org/">processing</a> sketch and then draw graphs in minecraft on the FACT server at mc.fact.co.uk as its a space young people are very engaged with. Along the way I wanted to just introduce how you might go about making inferences from the data you collect in the environment; does a certain temperature and muddy water mean the water is healthy? Or do we need water full of useful stuff for animals to live in it?<br/><br/><img alt="image" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-eLgrcSFNl60/U8RCZWdDohI/AAAAAAAAEJc/hsO0l7Al0DI/w333-h593-no/IMG_20140711_135312065.jpg"/></p>
<p>We made very simplistic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbidity" title="Turbidity on wikipedia">Turbidity</a> sensors by measuring how much light passed through test-tube samples, and then used DS1820 temperature sensors with the <a href="http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/OneWire" title="One WIre protocol on arduino playground" target="_blank">1-Wire protocol</a>. In the end we could not get the 1wire stuff working in time but we did get rough analog values that changed with temperature and flashed LEDs in sequence to represent a high or low value. The turbidity sensor was inspired by this brilliant <a href="http://hackteria.org/wiki/DIY_turbidity_meters" target="_blank">Hackteria design</a></p>
<p><img alt="image" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Iat4KEqU3gc/U8RB9OiIzdI/AAAAAAAAEIU/hS5YiQaWTKs/w929-h522-no/IMG_20140711_143949991_HDR.jpg" width="500"/></p>
<p><br/>We then built rafts to launch out sensors onboard; which really made the sensors come alive<br/><br/>This was a pilot project; we had a lot of great feedback that we need to use to streamline the project: we need to make the shrimp assembly instructions easier and as handouts for everyone and could leave out a lot of components. We also need to incorporate the one-wire library into our code to make the temperature sensors read properly. And finally we need to make templates for recording temperature readings that we made with the flashers.<br/><br/>You can get the prototype pack of processing and python code, CP2102 USB drivers and instruction for shrimp kit assembly <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/misc/cloudmaker/WALNEYSOUNDINGS.zip" target="_blank">here</a>. Theres also a lot of cross curriculum potential in here but it was the first time the school and looked at any technology that you built yourself: and that IT and computers don&rsquo;t have to be software on Windows desktops. A result for me was the obvious delight in getting the arduinos working and calibrating the flashing LED sequence 'language&rsquo;: If you gave someone a small breadboard with a flashing LED they would not be impressed but because they&rsquo;d built it from scratch and invested meaning and context into it, it had a massive impact!<br/><br/>The next step is to reproduce the workshop with the kits that our co-reseachers help develop for the <a href="http://currently.no" target="_blank">Currently project</a> at Liverpool Maritime Museum with National Museums Liverpool on Saturday 20th August 12 -4 pm with Adrian McEwen and <a href="http://nautilog.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Amanda Steggell</a>. We will be adding some improvements and trying out some pH sensors and possibly some radio controlled sensors while also making 'LED throwies&rsquo; to do some morse code <br/><br/></p>
PublicEngineering2014-06-18T19:10:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/06/18/publicengineering-is-a-response-to-bochum-in-the<p><img alt="DasLabor image" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-jMqGHdA3hJM/U6b-w6K4cGI/AAAAAAAADxU/ScW5bA3YchE/w929-h522-no/IMG_20140622_180437700.jpg" width="500"/></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6fX9SdOkbaA" width="500"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/wiki/wiki/PublicEngineering" target="_blank">PUBLICENGINEERING</a> is a response to Bochum in the Ruhr region of Germany losing a big part of its car industry, an Opel factory (owned by General Motors) while counterpart GM factories remain open like the one in Ellesmere Port near Liverpool. <br/><br/>Local cultural organisations <a href="http://www.schauspielhausbochum.de/" target=_blank">Schauspielhaus Bochum</a> and <a href="http://www.urbanekuensteruhr.de/de/" target="_blank">Urbane Kunst Ruhr</a> in Bochum set up artistic projects in response to this, one of which they invited Ross Dalziel to develop through curator Paul Domela.</p>
<p><strong>PUBLICENGINEERING</strong> was a family friendly event for local people to encounter the local technical culture in Bochum; engineers, hackers, students, computer scientists, makers or industrial hobbyists to take part in a cardboard construction production line. It&rsquo;s a collaboration between Ross, <a href="http://www.das-labor.org/?lang=en" target="_blank">DasLabor</a> Bochum&rsquo;s Hackerspace , <a href="http://doesliverpool.com" target="_blank">DoESLiverpool</a> and <a href="http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk%20" target="_blank">Patrick Fenner </a><br>
<br>Its a way to place DasLabor on a local public platform and as a model for future independent social and economic practice. DasLabor already do social events like this but for PUBLICENGINEERING a specific collaborative <a href="https://wiki.das-labor.org/w/publicengineering" target="_blank">event by Das Labor</a> was setup based on an exchange between engineer in residence Patrick in
DoESLiverpool the maker/co-working space Ross is based at and <a href="https://twitter.com/_cibo_" target="_blank">Kai</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/635nm" target="_blank">Laurenz</a> from DasLabor.</a>
<br>
<p>The project although a simple celebration of DIY engineering and hackspace culture in the Ruhr region is really a low level entry into discussing strategies &amp; resilient practices that retain &amp; support technical knowledge and agency in a region that loses part of it&rsquo;s predominant industry.</p>
<br><p>Large industrial changes cannot account for the impact on local communities and often the industry itself lacks real community engagement; it's simple not part of the accounting. Is it possible for neo-liberal economic impacts to be resisted and managed at a local level that works for peoples real lived experience?
<br>
<p><br>Or is this the instrumentalising of neo-liberal capitalism itself, where all agency and so responsibility is placed on individuals rather than sprawling corporate structures that hold the key capital assets like fossil fuel and telecoms infrastructure.
<br>
</p>
<p><br>In the face of this what agency <strong>can</strong> we foster in terms of the technical skills of a community that works in an industry when it suddenly shifts and collapses?
</p>
<br>
<p><br>Hackerspace cultures are increasingly showing ways forward to the arts and humanities in terms of resilience and fostering agency through knowledge. Perhaps they only exist as an affect of globalisation; cheap access to the internet and components from china, a non-unionised yet self-organising, fragmented yet distributed workforce. Industrial relations in technical culture is complicated and difficult to map now, but nevertheless these often non-unionised technical communities find time and space to build and maintain tools and community with a vision of resilience and freedom.
<br>
<p><br>They seem to point the way forward when much of 'arts' culture is now spectacle based tourism and some kind of counterpart to mainstream media journalism. Hackerspace culture has the tools and potential to modify how economies work as technology underpins the flow of capital. Perhaps <strong>this</strong> is the culture industry one that may affect real change to the inequality industrial 'business as usual' can cause.
<p><br>
<br>Public Engineering reminds Bochum that technical cultures don't vanish when the employer does and may be the kind of grass roots community local government and economic planners need to invest in supporting and engaging rather than trickle down approaches to regional support when big business changes.
</p><br>
<p><br>This is part of my work exploring an art practice that considers science and engineering to be a culture to critically participate in rather than a subject to speculate on and critique. As usual I'm humbled and inspired by all the people involved in these cultures. Das Labor's generosity has been incredible and will continue to have real positive impact well beyond the end of the festival. Urbane Kunst Ruhr and Schauspielhaus have been brilliant supporters and gave us the freedom we needed.
</p><p><br><br>
They were essential in making it happen, but one thing I learnt is that although hackerspaces benefit to a degree from their cultural platform, they don't need the creative industry to survive, rather the creative industry needs them.
</p><br><br>
<p>Thanks to Paul Domela who supported and understood the development and importance of this project.
</p>
<br>
<p>The Clip above shows <a href="https://twitter.com/lambdafu" target=_blank>Marcus Brinkmann</a> discussing DasLabor and hackspace culture and learning in tech with curator Paul Domela, Ross, <a href="https://twitter.com/Katti" target="_blank">Katti Granneman</a>, Kai Michaelis, Laurenz Holthoff, Maira das Neves, Pedro Victor Brandao and Aurel Thurn from UrbaneKunstRuhr,</p>
<p><img alt="DasLabor image" src="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/misc/Bochum/DasLiverpoolOK.png" width="200"/></p>
CloudMaker & The Minecraft Of Things2014-03-13T18:23:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2014/03/13/minecraftofthings<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_n2ebjp58kO1r2ybsso2_r1_1280.png" width= 600><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_n2ebjp58kO1r2ybsso3_r1_1280.jpg" width = 600><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_n2ebjp58kO1r2ybsso1_1280.jpg" width = 600><br/><br><p>Been busy the past 3 months building the #minecraftofthings for <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/cloudmaker-making-minecraft-real" title="CloudMaker on FACT website">CloudMaker </a>with <a href="http://twitter.com/printcrafting" title="Printcrafting on Twitter">@printcrafting</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/amcewen" target="_blank">@amcewen</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/dr_mark_wright" target="_blank">@dr_mark_wright</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/FACT_Liverpool" target="_blank">@FACT_Liverpool</a> and co-researchers at <a href="http://thestudio-liverpool.co.uk/" target="_blank">Liverpool Studio School</a> supported by the <a href="http://www.itutility.ac.uk/" target="_blank">ITaaU network</a> of the UK research council and <a href="http://fact.co.uk" target="_blank">FACT</a></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="281" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92258008" width="500"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/92258008">CloudMaker - Making Minecraft Real</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/factliverpool">FACT</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>Inspiring to work alongside <a href="http://twitter.com/paulharter">@paulharter</a> who has used his awesome printbot bukkit plugin and <a href="http://printcraft.org">printcrafting</a> system to make Minecraft worlds from RFID cards visible in a beautiful custom arcade game minecraft RFID worldviewer. If you ever wondered what hidden worlds could be within your oyster card then you can go there within his installation. Its not just an artistic gesture; its a usable &amp; scalable system to physically ‘collect’ your digital models; a calling card for your ‘technical identity’ a term that came up with discussions with the Studio School head.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bh_EKmKCIAAZvQH.png" width="500"/></p>
<p>I’ve been working with Year 11 co-researchers at the school to build a scale model of the local Cains Brewery site in Liverpool and then 3dprinting the <a href="http://printcraft.org/models/lukerotheram" target="_blank">models</a> using Printcraft.</p>
<p>These become tangible interfaces for a live immersive projected minecraft world; using a Microsoft Surface 2 table and tuio/OSC tracking feducials these 3D objects build themselves into the server to make a whole new physical interaction with the game. A 3Dprinted minecraft monkey allows you to explore an immersive projected minecraft world; moving him across a 2D visual map of the server on the Surface (using <a href="http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/dynmap/" target="_blank">Dynmap</a>) transports you to that point in minecraft with the 3D models building &amp; moving around you.</p>
<p><img alt="TLRN Crane and Mark Wright" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BinY3nAIAAAYnqz.jpg:large" width="500"/></p>
<p>Alongside this <a href="http://twitter.com/@DefProc" target="_blank">@DefProc</a> ‘s <a href="http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/" target="_blank">Patrick Fenner</a> has built a trilateration #TLNR robotic crane that allows you to build cardboard minecraft structures; positioning cardboard voxels with the same Math GPS positioning uses.</p>
<p>One of the most fascinating part of the project for me and my works concerns is exploring the knowledge production that takes place across the Minecraft community topology. It’s what makes Minecraft important: its simplicity belies the complexity of thought it becomes a tool for; its a space to imagine or construct a problem to model a solution or a series of questions. The co-design space the game has become is not pure virtual lego construction: its also become a meta-space for everything from <a href="http://artjelly.tumblr.com/post/41965963357/just-amazing-this-cant-believe-only-just-found" target="_blank">computation</a>, mapping, public consultation, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCXka2nX-0M" target="_blank">Katy Perry Cover Versions</a>, with <a href="http://www.stuffbydavid.com/mcnbs">NoteBlocks</a> learning <a href="http://www.codeamine.com/" target="_blank">Python</a> and <a href="http://scriptcraft.js" target="_blank">Javascript</a>, log flumes, chess and even <a href="http://qcraft.org/" target="_blank">Quantum Physics</a>.</p>
<p>A response to this ‘knowledge space’ was to use Minecraft for product design, a divergence from its intuitively physical architectural virtual/habitative space. Working with <a href="http://book.roomofthings.com/" target="_blank">Internet of Things</a> advocate <a href="http://www.mcqn.net/mcfilter/" target="_blank">Adrian McEwen</a> we used <a href="http://shrimping.it" target="_blank">Makers of Morecambe</a> shrimp arduino kits and <a href="https://github.com/tino/pyFirmata" target="_blank">PyFirmata</a> and <a href="https://github.com/paulharter/mciot" target="_blank">mciot</a> to make minecraft events trigger LED monitoring and then simple switches to control events in the game; a domestic light pull switch makes it day or night in the game world. Our young researchers made 3Dprinted objects interactive; a chest flickers LED warnings when a house is griefed; a tree has a hidden button to build random forests with WorldEdit<br/><br/> The project output is a series of prototype resources physical and digital for co-design and creativity. It’s shown as a pop up exhibition at FACT’s ground floor Connects space and a chance to see how the public reacts and what new things we can learn from their responses.</p>
<p>The MinecraftOfThings is growing exponentially and we are by no means its pioneers but part of an evolving &amp; emerging community. The beauty of Minecraft is the way it has exposed new hinterlands of post-network society ‘hobbyist’ or amateur knowledge culture; with perhaps quite odd connections to the tinkerers and makers of the past. In 20 years perhaps it will be at event like the <a href="http://www.northwestvintagerally.co.uk/" target="_blank">North West Vintage Rally</a>.</p>
<p>For now keep it real. Keep it minecraft!</p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/aHKJOAczN_I" width="560"></iframe></p>
DoESLiverpool2013-12-08T17:49:14+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/12/08/this-week-i-finally-moved-into-doesliverpool<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxife2HfIz1r2ybsso1_1280.jpg" width = 400 ><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxife2HfIz1r2ybsso2_1280.jpg" width = 400 ><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxife2HfIz1r2ybsso3_1280.jpg" width = 400 ><br><br><p>This week I finally moved into DoESLiverpool! Getting a half tonne LaserScript 1290 Pro laser cutter onto the 4th floor was a minor miracle and could not have done it without the power of Liverpools tech community/mates: Mega props to <a href="https://twitter.com/wowballsUK">@wowballsUK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DefProc">DefProc</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/mcknut">@mcknut</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MethodDan">@MethodDan</a> John Ramsey, JR, Hakim <a href="https://twitter.com/DoESLiverpool">@DoESLiverpool</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Defnetmedia">@Defnetmedia</a> for the help, support, problem solving and heavy lifting! @DoeSLiverpool now centre of all things laser in Liverpool City centre… &amp; Special thanks to Simon Derwent of Wowballs and Open Source Swan Pedalo fame for driving &amp; finding a temporary home for the Currently bathysphere kit with Grace at the Liverpool Water Sports Centre</p>
PublicEngineering Research Trip2013-12-07T04:30:56+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/12/07/last-month-had-awesome-inspiring-research-trip<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxfjrk1znp1r2ybsso1_1280.jpg" width=400><br/><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxfjrk1znp1r2ybsso2_1280.jpg" width=400 ><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxfjrk1znp1r2ybsso3_1280.jpg" width = 400 ><br><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mxfjrk1znp1r2ybsso4_500.jpg" width = 400 ><br><br><p>Last month had awesome inspiring research trip with Urbanekuensteruhr to @dasLabor with @lambdafu looking into hackspace &amp; maker/geek culture in Bochum. Love dasLabor projects; a talented and important community in Bochum <a href="https://www.das-labor.org/wiki/LABOR_Wiki">https://www.das-labor.org/wiki/LABOR_Wiki</a></p>
<p>Great friendly and interesting creative people. Working on some sort of exchange with @DoESLiverpool next summer. Marcus Brinkmann &amp; co took me to amazing space <a href="http://www.dienstagstreff.de/">http://www.dienstagstreff.de/</a> with restored pinball machines, studio spaces, 8bit tapestry &amp; C64 lab. </p>
<p>Now to design &amp; build some sort of large social construction machine&hellip;more on project soon&hellip;</p>
CloudMaker2013-10-14T06:28:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/10/14/pulling-stuff-together-this-week-for-minecraft<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_munp83ZTbF1r2ybsso1_400.jpg"/><br/><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_munp83ZTbF1r2ybsso2_1280.jpg"/><br/><br/><p>Pulling stuff together this week for #minecraft #cardboard textures for the Open Hardware Jam at @Oggcamp 19- 20 October 2013, this weekend at the Art &amp; Design Academy at LJMU. Looking to do some minecraft construction using @defproc &rsquo;s amazing TriLateration (TLRN) crane fresh from its public debut at MiniMaker Faire Manchester and the AND Fair at AND Festival&hellip;</p>
<p>Maybe one day we can make cardboard redstone with RaspberryPi&rsquo;s and conductive ink?</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m made up to be one of the Open Hardware Jam organisers alongwith Patrick Fenner and Dan Lynch. It&rsquo;s an informal jam of diverse disruptive and open source thinking, systems, artworks and products from all over the UK from the internet of things to local letterpress printing, GSR bodysensing to minecraft to community PCB production: its going to be a totally hybrid physical and virtual experience!</p>
Making Sense of Skeletons2013-10-07T08:37:48+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/10/07/today-been-building-up-kinect-skeleton-tracking<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_muawj0Xvrk1r2ybsso1_1280.png"/ width=400></img><br/><p>
<br>Today been building up Kinect skeleton tracking synths in Supercollider with the brilliant Synapse OSC app by Ryan Challinor for MakingSense exhibition opens next Fri at <a href="https:/twitter.com/falloutfactory">@falloutfactory</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/TickyLowe">@TickyLowe</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/cheapjack">@cheapjack</a> <a href="AilieRutherford">@AilieRutherford</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidOgle">DavidOgle</a> Don&rsquo;t miss it! <a href="http://pic.twitter.com/mfMj1Mubwq">http://pic.twitter.com/mfMj1Mubwq</a></p><br><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BVmaKsTIUAEyKLc.jpg" width = 400></img>
Drone It Yourself2013-10-07T08:33:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/10/07/great-day-talking-drones-3dprinting-reprap-rc<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_muawboMfRg1r2ybsso1_1280.jpg" width=400><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_muawboMfRg1r2ybsso2_1280.jpg" width=400><br><br><p>Great day talking <a class="link-complex" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23drones" rel="hashtag" target="_blank"><span class="hash">#</span><span class="link-complex-target">drones</span></a> <a class="link-complex" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%233Dprinting" rel="hashtag" target="_blank"><span class="hash">#</span><span class="link-complex-target">3Dprinting</span></a> <a class="link-complex" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23reprap" rel="hashtag" target="_blank"><span class="hash">#</span><span class="link-complex-target">reprap</span></a> RC culture at <a class="link-complex" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23And2013" rel="hashtag" target="_blank"><span class="hash">#</span><span class="link-complex-target">And2013</span></a> didn&rsquo;t fly but we did remote control <a class="link-complex" href="http://twitter.com/amcewen/" rel="user" target="_blank"><span class="at">@</span><span class="link-complex-target">amcewen</span></a> ;) <a class="url-ext" href="http://t.co/57lFxn7kVa" rel="url" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/57lFxn7kVa<br/></a></p>
<p>The drone narrative in mainstream culture imagines them as yet another elite run surveillance and control system; not to mention instruments of death; and with good reason. And then the 3Dprinting narrative says we can all make anything we want at any time avoiding sweatshops and taking a post-globalisation sidestreet..</p>
<p>There are some projects out there that are trying to open up much more complex hybrid narratives between the two, like <a href="http://jaspervanloenen.com/diy/">Jasper Van Loenan&rsquo;s Drone It Yourself</a>; Myself and OFFCUTLIverpool were asked by @ANDFestival to build his 3Dprinted DIY drone for the AND Fair</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s not the first DIY drone; drones are by default a massive DIY culture like its older RC flying community, but he has made a brilliant disruptive leap between DIY drone, digital fabrication and design culture. A conversation much more complex, but nevertheless related to the recent media &lsquo;shock&rsquo; of the 3D printed gun; its almost a counterpart design narrative but one less easy to resolve a response to. We can make access to drones and quadcopters much easier by digital fabrication but then to make it fly unstable inappropriate objects glitches up the engineering process; quadcoptors need super light weight balanced structures to get the control that makes them so useful (for whatever reason)</p>
<p>I didnt make our bike wheel fly, the 3D print we did hadn&rsquo;t enough tensile strength in the direction needed despite Mark, a local designer finding us a much lighter bike wheel!</p>
<p>We did however open up fascinating conversations around these cultures which we should have in retrospect recorded; from ethics and trauma of killing at a distance, to locksports, where &amp; how to 3d print (@DoesLiverpool is the place!), what is prototyping, how to fly, local hackspace culture, how to be an engineer all the way to planning celebrity arduino workshops with Stevie Nicks.</p>
<p>The hardest things to collect are the conversations artists and festivals make happen and no amount of streaming can capture that; you have to be there!</p>
<p>Thanks again to ANDFestival &amp; Jasper for letting me take part in the ANDFair, Mark for donating a wheel, Adrian Mcewen and Glenn Boulter for flight tests, Patrick Fenner and DoESLiverpool for the RepRap use and the brilliant Andy Goodwin for all his help with motors and difficult ESC RC controller board choices!</p>
MadLab HackDay2013-06-13T06:08:22+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/06/13/great-to-get-involved-with-naomi-kashiwagis<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mobw9yCodE1r2ybsso1_1280.png"/><br/><p>Great to get involved with <a href="http://whitworthinthemix.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Naomi Kashiwagi&rsquo;</a>s #inthemix sessions at <a href="http://madlab.org.uk/">MadLabUK</a>. I brought along a 4bit (possibly less) crunchy lasercut acrylic bootleg of <a href="http://www.thatfuckingtank.co.uk/">That Fucking Tank&rsquo;s</a> &lsquo;Brucesteenhenge&rsquo; and a micro rumble strip prototype all made with the elegant coding and calculation of <a href="http://www.amandaghassaei.com/about.html" target="_blank">Amanda Ghassaei</a>&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Cut-Record/" target="_blank">Instructable</a>. Try it! Must be the most elaborate and useless bootleg of their brilliant work it gets worse each time you play it&hellip;I will have to send them one in tribute to their work with Never Records in Liverpool&hellip;</p>
<p>Then really good to think about other forms of making music physical or the other way round with people like James Medd who showed me his <a href="http://physicalechoes.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Physical Echoes</a> project. As usual another brilliant mix of people at Madlab!</p>
Currently Hackathon2013-04-15T16:32:31+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/04/15/completed-the-first-currently-hackspace<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/63520066?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="220" frameborder="0" title="Currentlyliv SerialBuoy Launch" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe><br/><p>Completed the first <a href="http://currently.no" title="Currently website" target="_blank">Currently</a> hackspace! Successfully launched our prototype #SerialBuoy a design using recycled water bottles found by John O'Shea on instructables. We used Steve Symon&rsquo;s handy <a href="http://www.lprs.co.uk/" title="EasyRadio" target="_blank">EasyRadio</a> module to send basic asci messages from the dockside to an LED flasher onboard and of course Open Source Swan Pedalo to launch it driven by Amanda Steggell, Steven Thorpe and Elisabeth Weihe.</p>
Hacky Birthday2013-02-23T00:00:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2013/02/23/Hacky-Birthday
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/62172831" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/62172831">Hacky Birthday! Celebrating 10 years of the FACT building</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/factliverpool">FACT</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a><br /><br /><br />
Just came across this video of <strong>Hacky Birthday</strong> an event I worked on with FACT &amp; Laura Pullig featuring remixes of my past projects DS Orchestra, Crazy Golf Hack and Fairground Frameworks
</p>
Noisy Table Hack2012-12-30T10:52:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/12/30/amcewen-and-i-played-around-with-noisytable-and<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mfupeyDHkB1r2ybsso1_1280.jpg" width=400><br/><img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_mfupeyDHkB1r2ybsso2_400.png" width = 400><br/><br/><p>@amcewen and I played around with #NoisyTable and managed to use the comport object in PureData to turn the MIDI output of the NoisyTable arduino into a solenoid trigger using some simple toy bells that we made an acrylic stand @OFFCUTLiverpool.</p>
<p>We didn&rsquo;t manage a #pingpong rendition of jingle bells but we did play some chords! @mikestubbs brought his kids along for testing purposes later. Plan is to get some fresh solenoids attached to the &lsquo;bellhack bellrack&rsquo; and the code for reading MIDI and serial all packaged up into a usb powered device so we can get it touring wherever #NoisyTable goes in the future.</p>
Astroturf2012-11-21T06:12:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/11/21/astroturf<img alt="AstroturfFlyer" src="/tumblr_files/Astrotureflyer.gif" width="400"/></p>
<br><p class="p1"><strong>Saturday 24th November 2012 4pm - 7.30pm FREE</strong></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>Everton Park Off Heyworth Street</strong></p>
<p class="p1"><em>Please use top car park Off Heyworth Street at entrance near May Duncans Pub or park on Heyworth Street. Pedestrians enter on Heyworth Street near the Breck Road traffic lights, follow the glowing signs and people with High Viz vests!</em></p>
<p class="p1"><a href="http://bit.ly/astroturf2012" title="Map" target="_blank">Click Here for Directions</a></p>
<p class="p1"><a href="http://www.liverpoolas.org" title="LAS" target="_blank">Liverpool Astronomical Society </a></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>FREE Family Astronomy Event</strong></p>
<p class="p1">Astroturf is a family friendly event to introduce the objects of the night sky and the many ways you can observe, from optical and radio telescopes to social media, mobile applications and simply looking up and recognising satellites, stars and constellations. </p>
<p class="p2">Part of Liverpool Biennials &ldquo;Unexpected Guest&rdquo; programme, artist Ross Dalziel has invited the &lsquo;unexpected knowledge&rsquo; of Merseyside&rsquo;s community of amazing amateur astronomy enthusiasts of Liverpool Astronomical Society Sidewalk Astronomy (LASSA). This 129 year old organisation will help show families and artists the amazing activity in the night sky and allow people to explore the local DIY expertise of their city at a site overlooking the Liverpool skyline.</p>
<img src="/tumblr_files/astropic1.jpg" width=400>
<p class="p2"><strong>Observing</strong></p>
<p class="p2">Fingers crossed we will get a clear &amp; dry window to use the amazing telescopes of the North West amateur astronomers of (LASSA)</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>Making</strong></p>
<p class="p2">Make Planispheres and night vision torches</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>Talks &amp; Presentations</strong></p>
<p class="p2"><em>Introduction</em> <strong>Ross Dalziel</strong> Artist</p>
<p class="p2"><em>The LAS</em> <strong>Brendan Martin</strong> Liverpool Astronomical Society Observatory Director</p>
<p class="p2"><em>The X-Ray Universe</em><strong> Martyn Bristow</strong> Liverpool John Moores University Astrophysics Research Institute</p>
<p class="p2"><em>Pulsars and Machine Learning</em> <strong>Rob Lyon</strong> Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics/MerseySTEM network</p>
<p class="p2"><a href="http://pinboard.in/u:cheapjack/t:astroturf/" title="Astroturf Pinboard" target="_blank">Astroturf Links on Pinboard</a></p>
Balloon Vortex2012-09-10T06:24:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/09/10/last-month-worked-with-artist-dave-lynch-to-create<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_ma4t0aO2VL1r2ybsso1_1280.jpg" width=400><br><br><p>Last month worked with artist Dave Lynch to create <strong>Balloon Vortex</strong> an interactive play space using a series of fans to create a temporary vortex to drive LED embedded weather balloons around Whitehaven civic hall. A kinect tracked the objects and made projection mappings live while families were invited to customise balloons and play with the vortex system accompanied by sound workshops with Octopus.</p>
<br>More pictures by Dave <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/octopuscollective/sets/72157631096519846/with/7795177374/" title="Balloon Vortex Photoset" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
Techno Viking2012-09-07T11:51:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/09/07/last-month-i-was-using-amcewen-s-marvellous-new<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_m9zo5iQRAk1r2ybsso1_500.jpg" width =400><br><br><p>Last month I was using <a href="https://twitter.com/amcewen">@amcewen&rsquo;s</a> marvellous new and improved #bubblino code and an Arduino ethernet triggered relay switch to help #technoviking inflate and deflate in response to #technoviking twitter searches for Wafaa Bilal&rsquo;s <a href="http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2012/09/meme-junkyard-technoviking.php#.UEoj2KSe7lM" title="Regine Debatty's post on #technoviking" target="_blank">Meme Junkyard</a> project at <a href="http://andfestival.org.uk" title="Abandon Normal Devices" target="_blank">AND Festival</a>. Was a brilliant bit of fabrication thanks to the awesome <a href="http://www.spacecadets.com/" title="Space Cadet inflatables" target="_blank">SpaceCadets</a> team and producer Tomas Harold from Cornerhouse. Also a quick big up to the AND volunteers who looked after him over the opening weekend!</p>
Black Coombe Text Adventures2012-07-12T13:51:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/07/12/last-month-i-worked-with-the-ever-excellent<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_m729qnttAG1r2ybsso1_400.jpg" width =400><br><br><p>Last month I worked with the ever excellent <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/collaboration/black-combe-adventures/" title="Octopus" target="_blank">Octopus Collective</a> and young people in Year 6 at Black Combe Primary school in Millom, Cumbria to develop some interactive text adventures using <a href="http://inform7.com/" title="inform" target="_blank">Inform</a>.</p>
<p>Starting off we made them play The Hobbit on a zx spectrum emulator and some adventure game classics like Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and Zork. For people used to playing contemporary games, to go back to games based purely on grammatical logic and imagination and no pictures was quite a leap.</p>
<p>You can play the games in-browser from <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/collaboration/black-combe-adventures/" target="_blank">these links</a> and you can play Abandon Hope one of my favourites <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/misc/cheapjack/BlackCombe/Bailie/play.html" title="Abandon Hope link" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>They came up with a fantastic series of games though, bending the reality of their school into all kinds of directions. Apparently they are already working on their sequels!</p>
<p>Thanks to all the supportive staff at the school and the endless enthusiasm of Peter Clark who built the best whiteboard hack Ive ever seen: its on the floor, kids can walk on it and its about 6m x 3m wide. Millom has a lovely resource in that school.</p>
<p>(via <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/collaboration/black-combe-adventures/">octopus collective - Black Combe Adventures</a>)</p>
Crazy Golf Film2012-06-13T05:34:09+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/06/13/crazy-golf-hack-commissioned-by-fon-2011-found<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/43024935?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" title="Crazy Golf Hack by Sound Network and invited artists at FON 2011" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe><br/><p>Crazy Golf Hack commissioned by FON 2011. Found this nice film of the project last year while planning Crazy Golf Hack 2 this summer (film by Ellie Chaney &amp; <a href="https://vimeo.com/43024935">Octopus Collective</a>)</p>
EarthUnBound2012-04-17T06:42:51+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/04/17/via-earthunbound-on-vimeo-uses-chiz-turnrosss<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/39096104?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" title="EarthUnBound" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe><br/><p>(via <a href="https://vimeo.com/39096104">EarthUnBound on Vimeo</a>)</p>
<p><span>Uses Chiz Turnross&rsquo;s manhole cover rubbing as a graphic score to trigger sound from the legendary psycho-geographic game Earthbound for the Super Nintendo System. Made with Iannix on osx </span><a href="http://www.iannix.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">iannix.org/</a><span> and via Glenn Boulter&rsquo;s JHack mod of a SNES Earthbound ROM played in ZSNES on osx</span></p>
<p><span>Based on a collaboration with Artist Glenn Boulter, using material from Ross &amp; Glenn&rsquo;s Operetta &lsquo;Mr Saturn&rsquo; in tuen based on his EarthBound mod 'Mr Saturn&rsquo; commissioned by Ross Dalziel &amp; Petr Svarovsky for Ultima Contemporary Music Festival 2011.</span></p>
<p><span>Find out more </span><br/><a href="http://chizturnross.tumblr.com/equinox%20day%201" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">chizturnross.tumblr.com/equinox%20day%201</a></p>
Unclouding Your Data2012-02-23T10:01:53+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2012/02/23/the-bbc-followed-up-a-project-i-did-for<iframe width="400" height="299" id="youtube_iframe" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QOby5g-N3P8?feature=oembed&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&amp;wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><br><p>The BBC followed up a project I did for @ANDFestival; I setup a series of <a href="http://dropdays.tumblr.com/" title="DropDays" target="_blank">DropDays</a> to try to seed <a href="http://datenform.de/" title="Aram Bartholls work" target="_blank">Aram Bartholl</a>s excellent <a href="http://deaddrops.com/" title="Dead Drops Arams project" target="_blank">#DeadDrops</a> project and make it go viral in the Northwest. @hwayoung and I were interviewed outside @MadLabUK to do a quick Mad Drop Repair&hellip; Who knows it might pickup again with some elusive regional TV airtime! Long live the DeadDrop!</p>
<p>Here I am plugging the concept at Ignite Liverpool last year&hellip;</p>
<p>Ross Dalziel - &ldquo;Unclouding your data&rdquo; (by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=QOby5g-N3P8">IgniteLiverpool</a>)</p>
Crazy Golf Hack at FON Festival2011-09-01T02:43:00+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2011/09/01/arduino-guitar-wicker-stags-head-hole-made-in<img src="/tumblr_files/tumblr_lqu2t8ErEO1r2ybsso1_400.png" width = 400></img><br><br>
<p>My project for <a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk">SoundNetwork</a> and <a href="http://www.octopuscollective.org/">Octopus Collective</a> featured an Arduino powered auto-Guitar Stags Head hole made in collaboration with the excellent Chiz Turnross Octopus's FON Festival 2011.</p>
<br>
<a href="http://soundnetwork.org.uk/?q=node/444">Crazy Golf Hack</a> was a site specific Artist hackspace and site specific physical computing workshop aiming to extend and support socially engaged contexts for art, technology and new music.
<br><br>
Designed and curated by Ross Dalziel with artists <strong>Chiz Turnross</strong> and <strong>Douglas Laing</strong>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/43024935?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" title="Crazy Golf Hack by Sound Network and invited artists at FON 2011" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
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This was a family friendly event allowing artists to playfully hack an existing pitch & putt golf course in Barrow Park and bring out its 'inner' crazy golf course.
A mix of fun and serious interaction design it allowed artists to learn from each other and collaborate and respond to real world hands on systems like golf courses.
Caller Birds2011-08-31T18:49:12+00:00http://cheapjack.github.io/2011/08/31/caller-birds-analogue-is-the-new-digital<p><span><span class="timestamp">October 6, 2010, 7:07 am</span> <a href="http://../posts/1255165835.html">#</a>
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<p>Installing Caller Birds at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.analogueuk.co.uk/">Analogue is the New Digital</a> show at Madlab Edge Street Manchester</p>
<p>Norman Kendall’s Albert Decap Robot Organ was a massive hit of the opening night of the show and AND; with a crowd of people chanting ‘one more song’ as it was pulled down for the night. Really made people smile and talk and attracted curious non-art scene locals from all over the Northern Quarter</p>
<p>The tweetable organ grinder monkey remains in the show responding to @DECAPSOUND #ANDfestival</p>
<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4084/5056996494_0bb0bd8ba9.jpg" alt="monkey" width="500" height="375"/> #ANALOG so get tweeting and get him moving!</p>
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